By Vanessa Maria, Creative Programme Leader
It’s been just over six months since we kicked off the 2025 British Council x Sound and Music commission as part of the New Music Commissioning Programme 2025–26, and the creative energy feels electric. As the Creative Programme Leader, I’ve had the privilege of guiding six bold creators – Yantó, María Gabriela Rubio Hernández, Fahmi Mursyid, Tony Onuchukwu, RIEKO and Yasmin Rai – through a journey of cross-cultural collaboration that spans continents, time zones and artistic disciplines.
What’s emerging is far more than a radio commission. It’s a reflection of how music can transcend borders, bend form, and make space for new voices – all now coming together in Transmutations, the world premiere broadcast and mixtape.
Vanessa Maria – Creative Programme Leader
Why this commission feels different
From the outset, this project was about trust. Trusting artists like RIEKO, María Gabriela Rubio Hernández, Fahmi Mursyid, Yasmin Rai, Tony Onuchukwu and Yantó to define what collaboration looks like across distance. Trusting that experimentation – with process, structure and sound – would lead somewhere unexpected and necessary. Trusting that if we centred care and listening, the work would follow.
Each creator pair has ventured off in completely different directions, yet there’s a powerful thread connecting them all: a commitment to experimentation, openness and deep listening. Rather than forcing everyone into a single framework, we designed a space where multiple ways of working could coexist and inform one another.
The collaborations
Each collaboration is shaping a unique sonic identity, reflecting the artists’ lived experiences as much as their musical influences.
María Gabriela Rubio Hernández & RIEKO are exploring the tension between structure and improvisation, drawing on folk songs, memory and migration. Their palette includes electronic textures, voice, ocean sounds and acoustic instruments, weaving an emotionally resonant and atmospheric work that feels more like a living organism than a fixed composition. It’s a piece that holds grief, distance and transformation in the same breath.
María Gabriela Rubio Hernández & RIEKO
Fahmi Mursyid & Yasmin Rai have taken a structured yet fluid approach to collaboration, developing a rhythm of alternating solo and joint sessions. Their work, now known as Interim Waktu, is composed of 11 movements created remotely across London and Bandung – a sonic dialogue shaped by modular synthesis, field recordings and microtonality. Listening to it is like moving through a series of evolving rooms, each one revealing a new perspective on time, space and texture.
Fahmi Mursyid & Yasmin Rai
Tony Onuchukwu & Yantó are embracing freedom at every turn. Working without rigid plans and trusting their instincts, their process is intuitive and fluid, with the potential to grow into a more defined output like an EP or album. There’s a joyful ease to their collaboration, rooted in mutual respect, shared politics and a willingness to follow where the sound wants to go.
Tony Onuchukwu & Yantó
Learning across borders
One of the most powerful aspects of this commission has been witnessing how collaboration reshapes artistic identity. For some creators, working with a partner across the world has opened up new relationships to archives, folklore and field recording. For others – including RIEKO, María Gabriela Rubio Hernández and Yantó – it has meant rethinking authorship completely, moving away from the idea of a single, isolated composer towards something more collective and porous.
What strikes me most is how quickly intimacy can form when artists are given time and permission to be vulnerable. Even though everything is happening online, there’s a real sense of presence in the way these composers – from Fahmi Mursyid and Yasmin Rai in London and Bandung to Tony Onuchukwu and Yantó in London and São Paulo – are holding space for one another, sharing works-in-progress, talking through doubts and allowing the project to change them.
What comes next
The pieces are due to broadcast on our weekly radio show The Sampler Mix at the end of this month, but I already know the impact of this commission won’t stop there. This project is proof of what happens when you bring together bold thinkers like Yantó, María Gabriela Rubio Hernández, Fahmi Mursyid, Tony Onuchukwu, RIEKO and Yasmin Rai and give them space to play across borders, disciplines and formats.
It’s also a reminder that radio isn’t just a destination – it’s a portal. One that connects, carries and transforms. With Transmutations, listeners will be able to experience this first cohort’s work on Resonance FM, on Mixcloud, and later this year as a dedicated EP – continuing the life of these collaborations far beyond a single broadcast.
Read the NMCP 2025-26 Transmutations world premiere announcement
Sound and Music and British Council partnership announcement
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