Music can assemble a whole world out of different sounds. A voice opens up beside an orchestra, an ancient instrument meets a gong, and the movement of the ocean becomes a piano melody.
In the new GAYA ONE review — three stories about creative freedom and attentiveness. Each has its own intonation: hope, presence, and imagination. Together they invite you to hear more — in music, in the world around us, and in your own response.
♪ The first note — hope: RAYE has received the Mercury Prize 2026
On 22 October 2026 in Newcastle, RAYE became the recipient of the Mercury Prize for the album THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE. — “This music may contain hope.”
The ceremony took place at Utilita Arena. Having received the award, the singer performed the song I Hate The Way I Look Today. The audience greeted the performance standing.
The album is divided into four parts and brings together jazz, soul, R&B, and classical influences. The jury noted the scale of the concept and the imagination of the artist, who allowed her music to go beyond a single genre.
What is especially appealing here is the very possibility of polyphony within a single work. Different states find their own place: they can replace one another, meet, and acquire new shades.
The album's title sounds like an invitation to listen closely. Perhaps hope will be found in the timbre of a voice, an unexpected turn of melody, or in recognizing one's own feeling that has finally found a sound.
♪ The second note — presence: the harpsichord meets singing bowls and gongs
On 24 October at 23:00, the “Concert for a Change of Time” is planned at Warsaw's Hashtag Lab — the Polish premiere of the project Meditations for Harpsichord by Katarzyna Kowalik.
The Polish-British performer combines the harpsichord with Tibetan singing bowls, gongs, and electronics. The program features music by Louis Couperin and Johann Jakob Froberger, as well as contemporary works, including Flow by Janet Oates, Akasha by John Palmer and Intertwined Silence by Anna Maria Huszcza.
Listeners will be invited to settle more freely in the space: the special sensory objects Intibag can be used to sit, lie down, or wrap oneself up during the concert.
This gathering has a wonderful creative idea: an instrument with a centuries-long history continues to open up new possibilities. Its characteristic sound enters into a relationship with the sustained resonance of the bowls, the gongs, and electronic textures.
On the project's website, Kowalik describes listening to music as an opportunity to practice attentiveness: sound arises and is experienced in the present moment. Here meditation becomes an artistic invitation to notice what is happening — to follow the sound, to feel the space and one's own presence within it.
♪ The third note — imagination: Alexander Laing's ocean
On 22 October, the music publication EARMILK presented the composition Oceans by the young pianist and composer Alexander Laing.
According to the publication, the 16-year-old author included it in his debut album The Delta Wave. The piano piece is inspired by the changing states of the sea: the calm beginning gradually gathers movement and strength.
Laing has said that the original melody came to him one evening at the piano and reminded him of a distant song carried across the sea. The music video, directed by Adrian Tanner, was shot by the ocean — the landscape returns the music to its imaginative source.
Here one can listen closely to how musical imagination is born. For one person, the movement of water reveals itself as a melody; another will hear in the same piece their own memory, a sense of expanse, or a premonition of travel.
The work continues to unfold with every new listening. The author has his own original image; we have the freedom to meet it and to discover our own response.
♪ A consonance that continues in us
RAYE's voice, Katarzyna Kowalik's harpsichord, and Alexander Laing's piano ocean are different creative worlds. Each unfolds in its own way and invites us to take part.
We bring attention, memory, imagination, and bodily movement to this encounter. Music finds continuation: it becomes a dance, a new thought, a desire to create, or to share what we have heard with someone close to us.
Thus a planetary symphony is born — in the consonance of unique voices. Each retains its own nature, while the encounter opens new possibilities for all.
