The music ages with the tea.
A tea ceremony in sound. By Filin Ilia, music by Greg Orca.
Each new infusion opens a new scene. A ceremony might pass through the hours of a day, or follow another path the tea suggests. Like the tea itself, each sequence is chosen and adjusted for the ceremony at hand.
A tea master brews for four guests at a low table. Water meets leaf, a lid lifts, the pitcher pours, cups rise and settle.
Nothing on the table looks unusual, yet every gesture is heard. The music is generated live from the ceremony itself, and when a guest raises a cup, it thins out: for a moment, you listen to the tea. Gongfu tea is brewed in many short infusions from the same leaves, and each round tastes different. As the tea’s quiet energy gathers in the body over a session, the sound deepens and returns. No two ceremonies sound alike.
Listen: a 60 to 90 second excerpt from the first listening, crossing from one round into the next. It never plays on its own.
“The seventh bowl I cannot drink. I only feel a cool wind rising beneath my arms.”
Lu Tong, Tang dynasty. The title is a nod to his song of seven bowls of tea, not a count of rounds.The first public showing, late November 2026, at Okūma, Vörösmarty utca 19, Budapest. Four seats at the tea table, with room for listeners around it.
For festivals, galleries, tea houses and private evenings. The piece travels from Budapest.
We come, set the table and pour.
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.