Remember the first time you ever lost yourself in the music? Remember how you surrendered your body to the beat, just for that moment. Without a care in the world.
Let BitterSuite take you there.
BitterSuite is a music company like no other. We take you into a universe of music where you feel, taste, touch and smell it. Unforgettable, unimaginable, live music experiences that bring audiences together. You have to feel it to believe it.
Let go and let us take you there.
The History
Let us guide you into the future of music. A world where we have turned the dial up on liveness.
A universe for your senses. Where your body becomes the music. And the music becomes you. Our works are purposefully intimate and uplifting experiences designed to invite audiences to surrender and hear music with imagination and body.
Exploring and researching the senses since 2013, our creative practice has garnered international press attention including Sky, Smithsonian Magazine, Guardian, ITV, BBC, One Show . The team have been commissioned by venues including Royal Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Arts and The Other Art Fair.
Our creative team includes experts in the fields of music, art, theatre, movement, food, perfume, psychology and neurology. We produce our own work but are always open to collaborations.
In December 2013 a team of dancers, musicians, chefs, perfumers and artists spent one month hidden away in the basement of Rich Mix in Shoreditch. We were armed with a vision and a question:
Can stimuluating the senses of the audience deepen the way we listen to sound?
We had four key inspirations:
- Synaesthesia and crossmodality
- Graphic notation
- Sensory integration
- Immersive theatre
In this time, we spent a month practically exploring the senses, synesthesia, cross-modality – curated by Stephanie Singer – with guest facilitators: Professor David Howes, Dr. Clare Jonas, Lawrence Becko, Perhaps Contraption, Kayo Chingonyi, Odette, Sarah McCartney, Adam Thomason.
In this basement we discovered something profoundly simple that excited us – musical massage. This has been the foundation of our unique creative practice.
Ever since then we have been passionately delving into musical formats – applying our multi-sensory knowledge to unlock radical reimagining of the ways audiences listen to music – through touch and sensory design.
Founded in 2014, the first piece we made was for Debussy’s bewilderingly colorful quartet in G. We designed a hugely ambitious show with 30 performers, who blindfolded each audience member, and led them individually through a highly choreographed experience of taste, smell, touch and movement. Each sensory pairing unlocked a new way of listening.
The piece received international press attention and it catapulted us into five more years of producing ambitious sensory concerts, Sensory Score, Tapestries, Held, and the world’s first festival devoted to sensory practice OPEN SENSES and to tour “Debussy” to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In 2020 we re-examined and evaluated our work and ways of working. During the pandemic, BitterSuite delivered an ‘exquisite’ experience called HELD which was a sensory experience for the home. HELD combines original orchestral music with guided storytelling to transport you to a cinematic universe within your imagination. We delivered the experience to 500 homes worldwide along with a box with carefully created sensory items – flavours, scents, blindfolds, illustrations.
We also began our journey of research into VIOLET DISRUPTION – an activist, electronica musician, and hyper deity for survival. Violet is an avatar, which represents an exciting new way for us to explore and channel our sensory expertise in digital formats. Building Violet for large-scale audiences, and debuting at the Finnish National Opera House in November 2022, we are channeling our signature intimate experiences into a large-scale space.
Our inception was grounded in the philosophy and psychology of the senses, synaesthesia, cross modality, sensory perception, somatic practice and sensory integration. As such lead arts programmes from primary to masters level education, and programmes with participants with sensory needs, neurodiversity as well as neurotypical groups. Our programmes and workshop leaders are passionate and able to adapt to the needs of the group and design a specific programme around groups. Providers include Bristol University, MAC, Institute of Education, Heart n Soul, LCC, Brown University, TEDx, UAL, RCC, LCM and more.
