The music ages with the tea.
A tea ceremony in sound. By Filin Ilia, music by Greg Orca.
First listening on 3 November in Budapest, by invitation. Film from that evening will play here.
The excerpt never plays on its own. Press play when you are ready to listen.
A tea master brews for four guests at a low table. Water meets leaf, the lid of the gaiwan lifts, the pitcher pours, cups rise and settle.
Nothing on the table looks unusual, yet every gesture is heard. The room answers each pour and each sip, and the music is generated live from the ceremony itself.
Gongfu tea is brewed in many short infusions from the same leaves, and each round tastes different. Seventh Bowl follows that change. As the leaves open and the tea grows lighter, the music moves on with it. As the tea’s quiet energy gathers in the body over a session, the sound deepens and returns. The tea is chosen by the day and the mood, so no two ceremonies sound alike.
About an hour. One tea master, four drinkers, and listeners seated around them.
“The seventh bowl I cannot drink. I only feel a cool wind rising beneath my arms.”
Lu Tong, Tang dynasty, from his song of seven bowls of tea. The title is a nod to him, not a count of rounds.Each new infusion opens a new scene. A ceremony might pass through the hours of a day, or follow another path the tea suggests.
One possible sequence
Like the tea itself, each sequence is chosen and adjusted for the ceremony at hand, so the scenes, their number and their order change from table to table.
How it works, for the curious.
3 November 2026
First listening, Budapest. By invitation.
Then
Late November 2026, Okuma tea house, Vörösmarty utca 19, Budapest
Public showing, date to be announced. Four seats at the tea table, with room for listeners around it.
Seventh Bowl can come to your festival, gallery, tea house or private evening.
We come, set the table and pour. The piece travels from Budapest.
A version your guests brew for themselves, with the same vessels and music, is in the making. Tell us if you would like it when it is ready.
Concept, vessels, ceremony
A Budapest-based interactive media artist working with light, generative visuals and installations that respond to the people in the room. Seventh Bowl is his second piece built around the tea ceremony.
Music
Composer and producer. For Seventh Bowl he builds the generative set that listens to the table and turns each gesture into music.