One of the draws of Backstage Music, as founder Lamorna Nightingale says in the concert introduction, is that you get to see things on stage here that you won’t see anywhere else. From musical experiments and improvisations to multimedia performances and ambitious new works, Backstage Music always serves up something to pique the interest.

Rosie Bennett at Midnight Static. Photo © Jared Underwood

Children of the Resistors was Backstage Music’s planned 2025 season-closer, rescheduled to early 2026 due to illness; Midnight Static is the program built in its stead, placing works by emerging musicians and performers next to two titans of 20th-century experimental music.

The first of these is John Cage’s Four6, a work that asks each of its four performers to choose 12 sounds to be performed at different timestamps. In a truncated arrangement helmed by Backstage’s 2025 intern, composer and clarinettist (and here, harmonic-whirly player) Aidan Eccleshall, there are some gorgeous textural touches: Mina Johansson’s saxophone, Rosie Bennett’s growling gong and Jarrah Zavier’s kit fizzing around the room – his tuning of the drums makes for the work’s most interesting sound. Eccleshall’s...