From the practice
Portfolio
Sim Torino — musician, collaborator and writer — working through listening, travel and musical exchange across West and North Africa.
This page presents selected examples of Sim Torino’s recent collaborative music practice. The videos show a developing thread of musical exchange across West and North Africa, including work with a kora player in The Gambia, a singer performing the tune of a traditional poem from Guinea, and musicians in Morocco. Together, they show the foundations of a practice built around listening, travel, improvisation and long-term creative exchange.
These examples are not presented as finished projects, but as evidence of an evolving practice: moving from chance encounters and exploratory journeys towards more focused, sustained and ethical collaboration.
This video shows a live collaboration between Sim Torino and kora player Dialy in The Gambia. It reflects Sim’s interest in listening-led musical exchange and in working responsively with West African string traditions. The collaboration is built around dialogue: adapting to Dialy’s phrasing, rhythm and melodic structure while bringing Sim’s own musical voice into the exchange. It forms part of the foundation for the deeper collaborative practice that Sound Routes is developing.
In this collaboration, Sim works with a singer performing the tune of a traditional poem from Guinea. The piece opened up questions around voice, oral tradition, language, memory and musical response. Rather than treating the material as something to simply accompany, the collaboration points towards a slower and more careful way of listening across cultural forms. It helped shape the direction of Sim’s current practice.
This video documents a collaboration with two Moroccan musicians. It reflects Sim’s growing interest in musical exchange across North and West Africa, particularly through rhythm, improvisation, shared performance and the meeting of different instrumental voices. The experience helped clarify the need to move from broad international travel towards a more focused and sustained collaborative direction.
This fourth example will show either another international collaboration or a piece of Sim’s UK-based musical practice. Its role on this page is to show the musical foundation that Sim brings into these exchanges: performance, composition, improvisation, arrangement and an ability to work responsively with other artists. This section can be replaced once the final video is chosen.
Reflection
Sound Routes is built around the idea that music can travel without becoming detached from people, place or context. Sim’s recent work has grown through encounters with musicians in Morocco, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Jordan and Egypt, and through the questions these encounters raise: how to listen, how to respond, how to collaborate without rushing, and how to let a musical relationship develop over time.
The selected videos show the beginning of a more focused practice. They are fragments of a larger journey: from informal musical meetings towards a more intentional way of working with voice, strings, rhythm, memory and place.
From the practice
Listening
Future audio sketches, field recordings and collaborative fragments will be added here.
Audio coming soon
Field recordings, sketches and collaborative audio will appear here.