CN Lester's 'Transpose' returns to Barbican, featuring some of the UK’s most exciting trans artists
CN Lester’s Transpose festival has unveiled the full line-up for the sixth edition of their Pit Party, which will take over the Barbican’s studio venue for four evenings of live music and performance. The event celebrates non-conforming work and features some of the UK’s most exciting trans artists.
This year’s showcase, titled SUBVERSE (12-15 November 2025), invites both artists and audiences to view the world differently, challenge dominant narratives, and defy binary expectations.
Introducing Transpose: SUBVERSE, founder and artistic director CN Lester explains: “Trans artists and audiences, in all the diversity of our practices, experiences, and inspirations, do not owe anyone the narrowing down of our artistic visions and understandings. The transformative power of live performance is to illuminate, in a shared space, what has previously been hidden; to see each other in a new light.”
Curated by producer and creative director ILĀ and directed by Jamie Hale, artistic director and founder of the Sky Arts Award-nominated company CRIPtic Arts, this year’s theme draws inspiration from ILĀ’s prolific career. Known for breaking down artificial boundaries and showcasing diverse voices, ILĀ has more recently been composing using DNA sequencing and the world’s first quantum synth. Through an electric mix of new work and playful pairings, five featured artists will explore disciplines beyond their core practices to produce unexpected results. The focus will be on music, sound creation and manipulation (via new technology and acoustic techniques), poetry, spoken word, and storytelling.
Reflecting on the theme, curator and performer ILĀ says: “With SUBVERSE, we’re stepping beneath the surface of dominant culture - not to hide, but to reimagine. This isn’t just a space for trans and disabled artists to perform - it’s a space to take artistic ownership, to resist being cast only in roles of reaction or service. We’re interested in what happens when we break open binaries - not just gender, but reality versus unreality, artist versus performer, body versus voice. The subverse isn’t an escape; it’s where the most vital, innovative work is happening. It’s where we find the artist self - not suppressed, but fully realised.”
Jamie Hale, director and performer for Transpose: SUBVERSE, adds: “SUBVERSE is a challenge - it’s a refusal to be bound by the restrictions imposed upon us by wider society, or to be forced into a defensive debate about our right to exist. We are claiming this moment to celebrate exceptional - world-class - trans creativity on its own terms.
"I’m so proud to be working alongside such talented artists, creating work that issues from our experiences while speaking universally. SUBVERSE is an invitation to join our intimacy, to absorb our atmosphere, and is a provocation to honour our artistry.”
The impressive line-up includes ILĀ and Coda Nicolaeff, co-founders and directors of TRANS VOICES - the UK’s first professional trans+ choir - performing two of their ground-breaking sonic installations: SECURESCUE and UN/BOUND. The latter features CN Lester and premiered as part of the Barbican’s recent summer immersive exhibition, Feel the Sound.
ILĀ will also collaborate with interdisciplinary artist Ray Felix Carter on a new commission. Disruptive yet playful, this piece combines music and text to reclaim the concept of dissociation, a phenomenon widely experienced by trans communities.
The Pit
Musician, composer and Transpose artistic director CN Lester will create an interdisciplinary piece with playwright and poet Jamie Hale, blending poetry, storytelling and contemporary classical composition with operatic vocality and extended vocal techniques.
For fans of CN Lester’s alt singer-songwriter back catalogue - described as “atmospheric, emotional” by The Advocate - there will be an advance performance of original songs from their forthcoming EP, Fellow Travellers, with further surprises yet to be revealed.
Reflecting on the continued importance of Transpose in its 15th year, CN Lester concludes: “The core principle of Transpose is ‘no assumptions’: no assumptions made about the people on stage; no assumptions made about the people in the audience; no assumptions that limit or deny the talents and potential of trans creatives.
"It was my touchstone when I founded the event in 2011 and when we moved to the Barbican in 2016; in a cultural and political landscape increasingly defined by institutional transphobic attitudes and actions, it is my guiding light.”
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