An unclassifiable polymath, British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Nwando fabulates speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music and multi-sensory installation.
She proposes new myths, rituals and provocations for perceptual change, radical care and transformation of the self and community, drawing from science fiction, Black Atlantic ritual cultures, biophilia, neuroscience, her own neurodivergency and Nigerian heritage.
Commissions include compositions for London Sinfonietta, BBC Concert Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Zubin Kanga, Opera North and Sky Arts, Zubin Kanga, Juliet Fraser, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Laura Bowler, The Hermes Experiment, Estuary Festival, Yarmonics, Radiophrenia.
Awards include: An Ivor Novello nomination, an Oram Award, and the Steve Reid Innovation award. Her debut album was released in 2022 on Matthew Herbert’s Accidental Records to critical acclaim including features in The Wire. She self released her debut EP The Passion of Lady Vendredi on her own imprint Tears In The Rain records alongside a 3 week run of shows at Soho Theatre.
Her work including live art gigs, sound art installations and curated happenings, has been performanced at Barbican, Southbank Centre, Wellcome Collection, Tempo Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Hepworth Wakefield, Melbourne Science Gallery, Tate Britain, Art/Science Museum, Singapore, Rewire 2023, Donau 2023l and She Makes Noise 2023.
Her piece “Dahlia (and you will be there forever and ever)” will be premiered by Laura Bowler on Saturday, 29 March 2025, as part of the MaerzMusik Festival.
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1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
I create rituals for the performer and the audience to go through. Liminal spaces for exploration, numinous journeys and sites of beauty. I am inspired by ritual cultures of the Black Atlantic (the shared cosmologies of my ancestors – from Nigeria through to the Caribbean), speculative fictions, science, multisensory practice.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I was high in a mountain in the countryside outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I was sitting at an old organ in a space where political activists worked. Lots of sonic ideas came to me and I began playing. And the sonic ideas have never stopped.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
This changes all the time! Lets just say a top 5 for today which is a sunny spring day full of hope, representing some of the different types of music I love.
Alice Coltrane – Eternity
Prokofiev – Romeo and Juliet, Kirov Orchestra
Cymande – Cymande
L’Rain – L’Rain
David Lang – Just
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
When I come to Berlin I feel a sense of possibility, a relaxation in my bones. I feel surrounded by art, music, experimentalism. I dive into pools and sweat in saunas. I dance all night and I wander through galleries.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
I live by the moorland in a small village. I walk out of my door and through a farmer’s field to an old reservoir on top of the hill where I can swim.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
As a multidisciplinary artist I’m always making different types of art. I just launched a photography and ceramics exhibition and am currently writing a short story.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Nkanzarirwa Hanu (Born from Here) by Batwa Bwindi artists
An incredible album made by an indigenous community from the Buhoma in Uganda. They live on the edge of their ancestral forest from which they were evicted. The songs tell their story and love for their forest.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Bjork
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I recently performed with the BBC Concert Orchestra for a radio show called Unclassified Live.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
I do all my writing on a computer so I suppose it is essential!
I am also interested in spatalised sound and have created pieces for binaural and surround sound listening
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I have 2 brothers and one sister and if you asked them what I did I don’t think they could answer! They are happy for me though!
