“Humans have eyes to see, ears to hear and bodies to feel. We are made to embrace music, feel joy and be together. What is more life-affirming and essential? – Stephanie Singer
BitterSuite exists to rethink music composition and reimagine concerts. We build unique creative teams to compose for a multitude of performance spaces and generate meaningful audience experiences. Uniting diverse elements into a whole that has to be felt to be believed. We make art to be experienced.We encourage audiences to venture beyond the limits of conventional concerts and explore a world where music permeates every inch of their being. We create bold, intimate works of art and participation programmes, taking inspiration from and drawing on a wealth of expertise in both arts and wellbeing.
Since our inception in 2013, we have been seamlessly blending audiences, musicians, and the sensory experience of live performance. Guided by the bold and playful vision of our artistic director, composer Stephanie Singer, BitterSuite is a producing house for experiential performance. Creating exquisite music and composing for all senses including and beyond sound.Our work has featured at internationally-renowned venues including Southbank Centre, BAM, Roundhouse, Finnish National Opera House, The Arnolfini, Rich Mix and Royal Opera House
Join us in redefining the boundaries of music and connection.
Each a creative force in their own right, they unite under BitterSuite to create the signature 1:1 sensory concerts that define our company.
Stephanie Singer, Anna Pearce, Eileih Muir, and Ashraf Ejjbair.
Acknowledging the pivotal role of our turning point collaborators, a collective of artists that we credit for nurturing and contributing to our foundational ideas.
Linzy Na Nakorn, Stephanie Kelley, Tanya Auclair, Deborah Bankole, Marah Stafford, Dr Clare Jonas, Dr Rozelle Kane, Phil Granell, Michelle Wright, Clem Teslfort, Lawrence Becko, Gina Ricker, Josh McNorton, Lucy Atkinson, Eleni Kyraciou, Lizzie Vogler, Nwando Ebizie, Jeffrey Garner, Andy Gardiner, Alice Katherine Phelps.
A world where shared experiences deepen our connections to music, each other and ourselves.
To revolutionise how people listen to and encounter music. Expanding the ways in which audiences access sound with our physical, digital and sensory experiences.
We are transforming concerts and performances by uniting arts, science, wellbeing, sensory stimulation and body practices.
BitterSuite’s reach extends into learning and participation, enabling participants and students to live the process and practice of BitterSuite. In our participation programmes we like to think of BitterSuite as an unconventional orchestra, where every orchestral element is given a new meaning. Within our participation programmes we develop unique artistic processes where groups and individuals can tap into their own lived experience of sensing, discovering how they understand and decode the world. And from this point of uniting the group to design experiences together.
In December 2013 a team of dancers, musicians, chefs, perfumers and artists spent one month hidden away in the basement of Rich Mix in Shoreditch. We were armed with a vision and a question:
Can stimuluating the senses of the audience deepen the way we listen to sound?
We had four key inspirations:
- Synaesthesia and crossmodality
- Graphic notation
- Sensory integration
- Immersive theatre
In this time, we spent a month practically exploring the senses, synesthesia, cross-modality – curated by Stephanie Singer – with guest facilitators: Professor David Howes, Dr. Clare Jonas, Lawrence Becko, Perhaps Contraption, Kayo Chingonyi, Odette, Sarah McCartney, Adam Thomason.
In this basement we discovered something profoundly simple that excited us – musical massage. This has been the foundation of our unique creative practice.
Ever since then we have been passionately delving into musical formats – applying our multi-sensory knowledge to unlock radical reimagining of the ways audiences listen to music – through touch and sensory design.
Founded in 2014, the first piece we made was for Debussy’s bewilderingly colorful quartet in G. We designed a hugely ambitious show with 30 performers, who blindfolded each audience member, and led them individually through a highly choreographed experience of taste, smell, touch and movement. Each sensory pairing unlocked a new way of listening.
The piece received international press attention and it catapulted us into five more years of producing ambitious sensory concerts, Sensory Score, Tapestries, Held, and the world’s first festival devoted to sensory practice OPEN SENSES and to tour “Debussy” to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In 2020 we re-examined and evaluated our work and ways of working. During the pandemic, BitterSuite delivered an ‘exquisite’ experience called HELD which was a sensory experience for the home. HELD combines original orchestral music with guided storytelling to transport you to a cinematic universe within your imagination. We delivered the experience to 500 homes worldwide along with a box with carefully created sensory items – flavours, scents, blindfolds, illustrations.
We also began our journey of research into VIOLET – an activist, electronica musician, and hyper deity for survival. Violet is an avatar, which represents an exciting new way for us to explore and channel our sensory expertise in digital formats. Building Violet for large-scale audiences, and debuting at the Finnish National Opera House in November 2022, we are channeling our signature intimate experiences into a large-scale space.
In 2023 we were commisisoned by the Southbank Centre to bring to life a deep dive into the explosive, life-affirming beautiful-strange feeling of Christine and The Queens. We created BODIES TILTED We led 2000 audiences through this wild and joyful experience and can’t wait for me.
Our inception was grounded in the philosophy and psychology of the senses, synaesthesia, cross modality, sensory perception, somatic practice and sensory integration. As such lead arts programmes from primary to masters level education, and programmes with participants with sensory needs, neurodiversity as well as neurotypical groups. Our programmes and workshop leaders are passionate and able to adapt to the needs of the group and design a specific programme around groups. Providers include Bristol University, MAC, Institute of Education, Heart n Soul, LCC, Brown University, TEDx, UAL, RCC, LCM and more..