Image credit: CN Lester, photographed by Raphael Neal.

Over the past decade, CN Lester’s Transpose has evolved from a self-run, one-night experiment into one of London’s most vital celebrations of trans and queer artistry. Returning to the Barbican’s Pit stage this November, Transpose Pit Party: Subverse invites audiences to descend into an inverted world – a bold collaboration with ILĀ and Jamie Hale that channels what CN calls a “chthonic power” of solidarity, mystery and transformation.

An acclaimed musician, writer and activist, CN’s work has always blurred boundaries – between genres, disciplines, and identities – driven by sincerity, care and community. Whether composing for their forthcoming EP Fellow Travellers or curating spaces for others, their message is clear: hope is something we make together. And for CN, London’s creative underground – from Trans Voices to CRIPtic Arts – remains the beating heart of that collective act.

You’ve worked across so many worlds – from classical and early music to queer activism, writing, and producing Transpose. Looking back, what first lit the spark for you – that sense of music and art as a tool for transformation?

I think the fact that music and art had always been both personally transformative and realer than real, for as long as I could remember – from my earliest memories of making music as a tiny child. It was a lot of sparks, all burning outwards – it made sense of the point of being alive.

Across your work – academic, creative, activist – there’s a through-line of care, truth-telling, and community. Which core values keep resurfacing and shaping how you create and collaborate today?

Sincerity – particularly in the world we currently find ourselves. I don’t think we have the luxury of the self-protective cowardice of cynicism and apathy – I’m not sure that we ever did. A running thread is how short a time we all have to actually say something, to make something – and I’m not interested in wasting that time, or working with people who waste their own time. I think we can sometimes behave – as artists, and in life in general – as though embarrassing ourselves by being honest, by trying and falling short, is the worst thing that can happen to us. But the longer I’ve been in this game, both as an artist and also teaching and mentoring others, the more I know that that’s an essential part of the process, and has to be embraced.

Image credit: Transpose: SUBVERSE creative team: (l-r) Jamie Hale (director), CN Lester (Transpose artistic director) and ILĀ (curator)

Transpose has grown from a grassroots idea into a fixture at the Barbican – creating space for trans and queer artists to thrive. How has the project evolved since it began, and what kind of energy or conversations are you hoping this latest edition, Subverse, will spark?

I genuinely didn’t think, at the beginning, that it would ever be more than a one-off event – and I think building the ambitions for it to be something bigger has come in fits and starts. I ran it for so long without any institutional support – from 2011 until my 2015 booking at Tate Modern – that it seemed incredible that any large institutions would care enough to want to be involved. Pitching it cold to Barbican, and then being accepted and supported and growing what Transpose can be has been both a huge privilege and also a sharp reminder of the ways in which we still have to fight for equal access, even when we’re backed by a huge and supportive institutional partner. I think with Subverse I’m fascinated by inhabiting that continual outsider position with strength and… I want to say a kind of chthonic power. From ILĀ’s first pitch of what Subverse could be, to the way that the theme’s developed in collaboration with Jamie Hale, I keep getting an image of some kind of mystery cult – an inverted world – and it’s both troubling and deeply seductive.

Image credit: Line-up for CN Lester’s Transpose Pit Party: SUBVERSE at The Pit, Barbican 2025. (l-r) Ray Felix Carter, ILĀ, Jamie Hale, Coda Nicolaeff, and CN Lester. Photographer credit Sophia Stefellé.

Curating something as multi-voiced and boundary-pushing as Transpose must come with its own alchemy. What’s your process for weaving together so many distinct artists, while keeping it rooted in solidarity rather than spectacle?

I think coming from a musical background helps – I’ve been used to working in ensembles since I was about 8 years old, and as much as I love my work as a soloist, I love my work in duet/trio/chamber ensemble just as much. At its best, that’s what Transpose feels like – an orchestra that needs every player to be more than the sum of its parts. But on the practical side it’s also linked heavily with my work as an arts consultant, and trying to keep learning, always – because I’m not perfect, and I can always improve – and I’m really grateful for the arts workers providing resources and training to keep doing so.

Your forthcoming EP Fellow Travellers feels like it’s travelling new terrain – emotionally, sonically, politically. Can you tell us about its world – the inspirations, the collaborators, the stories behind it?

Oh god – I can try! One of the things about making music is that you make it music rather than, say, a book, because it needs to go beyond language in order to say what it needs to say – and then you have to put it back into language to explain it! I started writing some of the songs before the pandemic hit, and then the world exploded, and I realised that there was a depth of despair and fury that I hadn’t thought it was possible to go beyond, and yet there we were. And then everything since then – I needed somewhere to let those feelings out, and to say ‘do you feel it too? do you hear it too? I’m not alone, am I?’. That’s probably the core driver – sonically, politically, emotionally – the way that we’ve been inculcated into feeling so isolated and hopeless – just us and our screens, doom scrolling horror that we can’t prevent – and the need to break out of that helplessness – to call out into what you think is the void, and then hear other people calling back.

Image credit: Line-up for CN Lester’s Transpose Pit Party: SUBVERSE at The Pit, Barbican 2025. (l-r) Ray Felix Carter, CN Lester, Jamie Hale, Coda Nicolaeff and ILĀ.

You’ve always blurred genres – baroque arias, piano ballads, art songs, protest music. How are you thinking about genre and voice these days? Has your relationship to sound shifted with time?

When I first started out as a professional musician in my mid twenties, I was very strongly advised to keep all of the genres I worked in separate and distinct from one another – so, that’s changed! I think it was inevitable that the more I owned my interdisciplinary approach in research and writing, the more I wanted to own it in music – because it was always interdisciplinary, and why not own that strength? So now I think it feels more like all of those possibilities for sound are ingredients waiting to be used – either in their traditional recipes or in new improvised ways – and it’s the pleasure of opening up the kitchen cupboard and thinking ‘what do I want to cook tonight?’

Image credit: Line-up for CN Lester’s Transpose Pit Party: SUBVERSE at The Pit, Barbican 2025. (l-r) CN Lester, ILĀ, Ray Felix Carter, Jamie Hale, Coda Nicolaeff.

You’ve long been part of London’s cultural underground. Could you share three London spaces or communities that are giving you life right now – places where art, care and resistance feel alive?

So one of the great pleasures of Transpose is working with artists I admire for what they’re doing in the world – so I have to shout out to ILĀ and Coda’s ensemble Trans Voices, and to Jamie Hale’s theatre company CRIPtic Arts. I think both are doing phenomenal and game-changing work of combining artistic excellence with artistic care and political advocacy. In terms of larger artistic campaigning groups – Black Lives in Music and Donne, Women in Music are both doing groundbreaking work – again, highlighting artistic brilliance alongside serious and hugely necessary challenges and remedies to toxic practices and cultures in the music industry. I’m sorry, that’s four! But all combining art, care and resistance in equal measure – just incredible people.

You’ve written and spoken beautifully about imagining better worlds – beyond binaries, beyond fear. What keeps you hopeful about the future – artistically, politically, personally?

It’s been hard, over the last five years, and it feels hard looking forward – but I’m trying very much to lean on the activist idea that hope is a verb, not a noun, and that’s giving me strength to keep going and keep working. Whenever I make art with other like-minded people I feel suffused with hope, not as something abstract, but as a real and tangible presence that we’ve brought into being through our shared effort. More than anything, that’s what I hope audiences for Transpose can feel – that they’re not spectators to that process, but active participants. It’s all of us or none of us – and, over and over again, making art together makes it all.

Find CN Lester at cnlester.com

CN Lester
Transpose Pit Party: Subverse
The Pit, Barbican
Wed 12 – Sat 15 Nov 2025
barbican.org.uk

All performances are Relaxed, BSL interpreted by Yusuf Gojikian on 15 Nov.