Ilya Ziblat Shay is a composer, performer, and researcher. He works in experimental music, with a focus on music technology.

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His practice explores the live interplay between musicians and interactive electronics. Using an ever-evolving set of digital tools – audio synthesis, interactive electronics, machine listening algorithms and visual interfaces – allows him to shape sounds and structures, as well as to investigate what it means to listen with and to technology.

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Language, speech, and other sampled audio provide material for digital processing. Through this lens he explores contemporary realities with a critical ear, aiming to map social, political and techno-ethical questions as augmented musical narratives.  (‘Breathtaking mangled messes … a volatile document of a volatile time’, Jack Davidson, Noise Not Music).

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Improvisation is another important thread: a continuous interplay between musicians, emergent sound structures, and interactive or autonomous electronics, inviting the audience to witness how musical processes unfold in real time. In parallel, he works with notation – mostly open and process-based scores – and plays bass.

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Ilya collaborates regularly with contemporary music ensembles and musicians, and his works have been performed at major venues and festivals across Europe. He is co-artistic director and performer at the Hague-based CatchPenny ensemble and a member of iii (instrument inventors initiative) collective workspace. He holds a PhD in artistic research from Leiden University and has lived and worked in the Netherlands since 2005. In 2026, he is an invited guest professor in the Electronic Music and Sound Art study programs at the University of Pécs, Hungary.

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  contact:   ziblatilya [at] gmail [dot] com