We welcomed Star Falling as Visiting Artists at the studio. The project brings together Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton, and Andrew Staples. Working as equal artistic partners, they develop recital formats that function as continuous experiences, where music, silence, light, and space are treated as a single expressive language.
Carolyn Sampson is a soprano whose work spans recital, concert, and contemporary repertoire. Joseph Middleton is a collaborative pianist known for shaping recitals as complete narrative journeys. Andrew Staples is a director, filmmaker, and performing musician whose work bridges sound, image, and space, focusing on creating inhabitable musical worlds rather than illustrated concerts.
During their time at Studio Richter Mahr, the team developed Star Falling as a continuous work rather than a conventional song recital. Working with repertoire by Hildegard von Bingen, Boulanger, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Crumb, and a newly recorded Rameau piece, they explored pacing, silence, resonance, and transitions as structural tools. The studio also functioned as a filmed test bed, with experiments in lighting, spatial atmosphere, and close and internal piano recording techniques, helping to establish a shared musical and visual language for the project.
