Music @ Capital House
This June, ArtHouse Jersey is transforming its gallery at Capital House into a vibrant sonic landscape, presenting a bold mix of underground club sounds, ambient experimentation, blues, and electronica. The series opens on Friday 20 June with the return of Cryptic - Scotland’s internationally renowned platform for audiovisual art - featuring performances from visiting artists Alex Smoke, Veronica Petukhov, and Curlew.
On Saturday 21 June, Jersey-based composer and DJ Duncan Forbes launches his new album Awake in the Dreamtime, joined by internationally acclaimed violinist Jonathan Hill. Mid-week on Wednesday 25 June, local legend and globally celebrated blues harmonica player Giles Robson takes the stage for an intimate performance. The series concludes on Saturday 28 June with two rising stars of the European electronic and experimental music scene: Shamica Ruddock (London) and Grace MacDonald (Zurich).
Tickets to all the events can be booked via ArtHouse Jersey’s Eventbrite page.
Cryptic presents Alex Smoke & Veronica Petukhov + Curlew
Friday 20 June 2025 at 7pm
ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House
Tickets £15 via Eventbrite
An immersive blend of sound and live visuals awaits with this welcome return of Scotland’s Cryptic as part of an ongoing exchange with ArtHouse Jersey.
Alex Smoke is a musician and composer working across various fields of sound, including electronic production, sound installation and instrumental composition. His work focuses on creating immersive experiences that engage the listener's consciousness. Veronica Petukhov is an Italo-Ukrainian digital artist and VJ. She specialises in video, digital art and installations and is also one half of the audiovisual duo muto major.
Sound & visual artist Veronica Petukhov
Using electronics and voice, Alex Smoke will create a new work inspired by nature, drawing from the local landscape while in residence at Greve de Lecq Barracks. Sonically, the piece will explore the boundaries between natural sound and its artificial representations. Responding to Alex’s compositions, visual artist Veronica Petukhov will capture the scenery of Jersey on film and translate it into real-time visuals. The project will culminate in a meditative concert experience, blending sound and visuals to evoke a deep connection with the environment.
Curlew is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Gill Higgins. Curlew’s solo work is often inspired by themes relating to her training as a surgeon and scientist, blending sounds of the ancient and the modern, through looped vocal harmony, field recordings, synthesiser and harmonium drones. A keen wild swimmer, Curlew’s research in Jersey delves into the folklore and superstitions surrounding the sea across the British Isles which she will present in live multimedia performance.
Established in 1994, Cryptic is Scotland’s internationally renowned home of audiovisual art and experimentation, and presents and promotes the most dynamic talents of today and tomorrow as they explore new dimensions in live music, visual and sonic arts and performance.
Established in 1994, Cryptic is Scotland’s internationally renowned home of audiovisual art and experimentation, and presents and promotes the most dynamic talents of today and tomorrow as they explore new dimensions in live music, visual and sonic arts and performance.
Awake in the Dreamtime by Duncan Forbes & Jonathan Hill
Saturday 21 June 2025, 6pm to 9pm
ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House
Tickets £15 via Eventbrite
A launch event for the summer solstice, Awake in the Dreamtime is a new album by Jersey based composer and DJ, Duncan Forbes with internationally acclaimed violinist Jonathan Hill. Recorded over the space of a year at Duncan’s studio in Jersey the album is a blend of beautiful atmospheric electronica combined with analogue sonics, treated piano and live strings Each track is accompanied by an abstract film created in Jersey by Matthew Le Maistre Smith. This album launch and first ever live screening and listening session of the music and films is designed to be an immersive experience with floor seating, bean bags and deck chairs.
Duncan Forbes has been at the forefront of the electronic music scene since the early 1990’s as one half the pioneering UK production duo, Spooky. He has DJ’d and toured live all over the world, scored various movie soundtracks and worked alongside and remixed some of the greatest names in electronic music including remixes for Sasha, William Orbit, Sven Vath, Depeche Mode, Apparat, Ladytron, Lush, Thom Yorke, M83, Telefon Telaviv, Natasha Atlas, Roger Eno. Before and after the screening of the film there will be local DJ’s playing a selection of laidback ambient, dub and electronica.
Giles Robson: Up Close with the Blues
Wednesday 25 June 2025, at 7.30pm
ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House
Tickets £25 via Eventbrite
A night with Jersey’s internationally acclaimed blues harmonica legend, Giles Robson plays and sings beautiful, powerful, emotional and timeless blues with a deep groove and laden with intense feeling. Widely considered one of the world’s greatest blues harmonica virtuosos, and one of only three UK blues artists (alongside Eric Clapton and Peter Green) to win a coveted Blues Award in Memphis, Giles plays in his own accomplished and distinct style that captures audience’s hearts and imaginations with his mixture of superb technique, rhythmic power, tonal control and sensitive emotional expressiveness. Witnessing Giles Robson live is a dazzling and unforgettable experience as audiences around the world constantly discover.
Shamica Ruddock & Grace MacDonald
Saturday 28 June 2025 at 7pm
ArtHouse Jersey at Capital House
Tickets £10 via Eventbrite
A double-bill of two artists making waves across the European electronic / sound scene. London-based Shamica Ruddock presents her live sound work Drum Language, which is an ongoing sonic enquiry exploring Maroon sound cultures and African-Caribbean folk drumming practices. The name Maroon, given to groups of free Black peoples, or formerly enslaved fugitives, who, from the 16th century onwards, created autonomous self-governing settlements in inaccessible landscapes across several countries, remains a byword for resistance. With Drum Language, Ruddock creates a reverberant listening space where the drumming patterns and the meanings they encode are broken down and undercut by interruptions, breaks and ruptures across an underlying funk.
Zürich-based Jersey composer Grace MacDonald writes music dedicated to low-resolution memories, fantasy and playful folktronica. Working with hybrid electro-acoustic music, her live performances, such as her recent multi-award-winning duo project, Knowing The Oak Tree, combine the natural sounds of voice and saxophone with their processed counterpart on a backdrop of a pixelated synth polyphony. A Ghost Holding Me is a thirty-minute solo song cycle dedicated to the peaceful loneliness found traversing familiar spaces, now empty. Imagine a quiet train carriage or an empty video game lobby. There is comfort in the familiar, well travelled paths of our memories, but they are not real, only ghosts.
Tickets for all Music @ Capital House events are now available to purchase via ArtHouse Jersey’s Eventbrite page.
