Carey Tan’s Original Works Concert Presented at the Royal College of Music

European Times, reported by Lu Tian’ai, intern reporters Zou Jingyan and Hu Xiaoxiao — “For me, music has never been just an after-school activity. It is another way of thinking, feeling, and expressing ideas.”

On the afternoon of 21 June, at the Royal College of Music in London, 12-year-old British-Chinese composer Carey Tan stood on stage and opened the concert with these words.

Over the following two hours, Tan appeared successively as host, piano soloist and marimba performer, joining the London City Philharmonic Orchestra to present four original orchestral works.

Carey Tan began experimenting with composition at the age of six. The four works performed that day were written between the ages of eight and twelve, covering themes including school life, the spirit of exploration, war and peace, and artificial intelligence.

The concert opened with the piano concerto The Explorers. Set against the Pacific Ocean, the Sahara Desert and Mars, the work portrays humanity’s courage in constantly breaking boundaries and exploring unknown worlds. This was followed by The Cries of War, which turns its gaze to conflict and suffering in the real world, using music to reflect on peace and humanity. In the second half, Four Seasons in Summer Fields drew inspiration from Tan’s boarding-school life at Summer Fields School in Oxford, using the changing seasons to connect childhood memory with the experience of growing up.

The final work, The Rise and Fall of AI Humanity, focuses on artificial intelligence, technological civilisation and the future of humankind. Through movements including “Construction of AI Civilisation”, “Dwelling in Reality”, “Nature and the Universe”, “Collapse and Destruction” and “Ashes and Echoes”, the work constructs a symphonic allegory about a future society.

Tan said that the piece is not intended to predict the future, but rather to ask a question: “As technological power continues to expand, can humanity still preserve wisdom, responsibility and emotion?”

On the day of the concert, many parents and classmates from Summer Fields School came specially to offer their support. Audience member Melisa told reporters that her son had studied at the same school as Tan since childhood.

“Watching his growth has truly been astonishing,” she said. “Many children can play instruments very well, but being able to create one’s own music is a challenge on an entirely different level.”

Another audience member, Ms Zhang, also brought her children, who are learning piano and viola, to the concert.

“I actually don’t understand a lot of music theory,” she said with a smile. “But I was really moved. Every piece was grand and powerful. You don’t need specialist knowledge to be drawn into it.”

After the concert, British classical music enthusiast Alan told reporters that what interested him most was not what Tan had already achieved, but where he would go in the future.

“You can hear the way he thinks,” he said. “Because he is still very young, there is a lot of imagination about technology and the future in his works. As he grows older, he will have more different life experiences and emotions. I look forward to growing with him through his music.”

Such comments reflected the shared feelings of many audience members. For them, what left the strongest impression was not only Tan’s age, but also the observation, imagination and concern for real-world issues shown in his works.

It is understood that this concert also marked the opening of Carey Tan’s 2026 summer international tour. On 24 July, he will return to his birthplace, Beijing, where he will collaborate with the China National Opera House Symphony Orchestra at the China National Opera House to perform The Cries of War and The Rise and Fall of AI Humanity, continuing to use music to open conversations with wider audiences about our era and the future.