How a Redwood Forest Gets Captured on the Open Field Album by Luke Mombrea, Darren Sng and Levent Altuntas
Three Composers Improvise with Field Recordings in One Continuous Piece at LSO St Luke’s
LSO St Luke’s, the London Symphony Orchestra’s home in a restored church near Old Street, is where Luke Mombrea, Darren Sng and Levent Altuntas recorded Open Field. Released on 14 August 2026, the Open Field album plays as one continuous piece. It sets field recordings from Oakland’s redwood forest, Germany’s Black Forest, Oslo and Singapore alongside piano, strings and slowly evolving synthesizers.
Luke Mombrea, Darren Sng, Levent Altuntas: that is the full credit on Open Field, the album’s title track sits in the playlist below, and every article on the record is gathered on the trio’s artist profile. The record reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Listen first, then read on.
Field Recordings From Oakland, the Black Forest, Oslo and Singapore Become Instruments on Open Field
Each track began as a composed starting point: an instrumental part, a synthesizer line or a field recording. That last option is the unusual one. On the Open Field album, the recordings count as compositional material rather than background. As a result, birdsong, swaying trees and the hum of insects carry musical weight next to the piano and strings.
Field recordings are already part of Mombrea’s language. His concert work leans on live electronics, folk material and recorded sound. The locations are personal too. Mombrea comes from Oakland, California, and the London Symphony Orchestra premiered his orchestral piece Redwood Hymn at the Barbican in June 2025. Sng, meanwhile, is a Singapore-born composer based in London. So the Oakland redwoods and the Singapore recordings come from places close to the people playing over them.
The track list also points back to those places. Sequoia I, Sequoia II, Black Forest Drifts, Oak and Highlands all take their names from trees or landscapes. Raindrops in the Sea and This World’s Chatter, on the other hand, hint at water and at the sound of the world around the microphone.
Three names explain the lineage. First, Brian Eno set the template for music that rewards attention without demanding it, with Ambient 1: Music for Airports in 1978. Then Max Richter stretched a single work across eight hours on Sleep in 2015. Similarly, Nils Frahm built Spaces in 2013 from live recordings made in front of audiences. The Open Field album sits between them: composed like Richter, improvised like Frahm and as patient as Eno.
Luke Mombrea, Darren Sng and Levent Altuntas Improvise Open Field as One Continuous Piece at LSO St Luke’s
Once they had written the starting points, the three composers gathered in the same room at LSO St Luke’s. The room was familiar ground for Mombrea. His London Symphony Orchestra commission Black Gold had its premiere there in May 2024. There the trio improvised in response to the material and recorded together. That method blends precision scoring with spontaneous playing. It also explains why the record holds together as one piece rather than a set of separate tracks.
On streaming services, Open Field appears as eleven tracks. They run from the title track, at five minutes and forty-seven seconds, to Oak at the close. Even so, the album works best in one sitting, and the whole thing runs just over 52 minutes. In practice, the detail and restraint of experienced orchestral writers keep that length from drifting.
A GRAMMY Entry Caps the First Album From Three Film and Orchestral Composers
All three composers come from film and orchestral work. In November 2025, Mombrea won an Ivor Novello Award for Black Gold, his work with the London Symphony Orchestra. He has also worked in the music departments of Silo, Loki and The Wild Robot. Sng writes contemporary concert music, film scores and electronic work, and Sng already co-hosts the Composers in a Jukebox podcast with Mombrea. Altuntas completes the trio as its third film and orchestral composer.
Meanwhile, the album has started to travel. In September, Sng announced that the Recording Academy had accepted Open Field for GRAMMY consideration in the Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album category. Sleep Tales releases the record under an exclusive licence to Downtown Artist & Label Services.
For listeners who keep Nils Frahm, Max Richter and Brian Eno close at hand, the Open Field album suits a long, quiet hour. Start at the beginning and let it run. Ideally, use speakers that can carry the space around each field recording.
AcousticMusic.News’s curator team:
“The striking decision on Open Field is to treat a redwood forest as a player. The birdsong and insects arrive as parts in the arrangement, so the improvising trio is always answering a fourth voice that cannot hear them back.”
Stream Open Field on Apple Music. Follow Darren Sng on the YouTube channel, Instagram and Facebook.
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