Khyam Allami is an Iraqi-British multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, researcher and founder of Nawa Recordings. His artistic research and practice explores experimental composition and improvisation based on, and inspired by, the fundamentals of Arabic music and culture. Recent works include Requiem for the 21st Century, an immersive Oud-based installation for Opera North (UK), Ma-a aba ud mena gin Ma-a di-di-in, a string quartet for JACK quartet (US), and Apotome, a collaborative project with Counterpoint Studio which was awarded the inaugural Isao Tomita Special Prize at Ars Electronica 2021 (AT). 

At Vivarium festival Allami will present an improvised live electronic performance using Apotome, a transcultural browser-based generative music system focused on tunings and their subsets (scales/modes). It was created with Counterpoint studio and launched in 2021 as part of a transcultural music project highlighting the cultural asymmetries, biases and non-neutrality inherent in modern music-making tools.