Dialogue between Ignasi Terraza’s piano and a UPC-created AI system to open Sónar+D
Philippe Salembier and Ignasi Terraza performing a piece at the ImprovIA concert that opened the Sónar+D. Image: Cecilia Díaz Betz
On Thursday 18 June, renowned jazz pianist and UPC honorary doctoral degree holder Ignasi Terraza together with ETSETB and FIB professor Philippe Salembier has opened Sónar+D with ImprovIA. This duo improvisation concert features an artificial intelligence system developed at the UPC that creates musical responses based on the sound of the piano.
Jun 18, 2026
Sónar+D, the international festival of art, science and digital culture held alongside Sónar, comes to Barcelona’s Llotja del Mar on 18 and 19 June with a programme inviting critical, constructive and optimistic reflection on the future. In the current climate of digital saturation, the festival features performances, talks, panel discussions, workshops and exhibitions to rethink and reimagine our relationship with technology.
On this occasion, the festival has opened with a concert entitled ImprovIA, in which pianist and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) honorary doctoral degree holder Ignasi Terraza has improvised several musical pieces. He has collaborated with an AI system developed by Philippe Salembier, a professor from the Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering (ETSETB), the Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB) and the Image and Video Processing Group (GPI).
Using signal processing tools, machine learning and AI, the system captures the piano’s sound and extracts musically relevant parameters such as pitch, tempo and rhythm to create a musical accompaniment or response in real time. This response then inspires Terraza to keep playing. In turn, the sound of his piano provides a new input for the system to generate another response. This structure is repeated to create a musical piece that can span different genres and explore new ones.
The system was created in 2021 as part of the Piano&AI project to produce the opening concert for the AI&Music Festival, an event dedicated to the links between music and AI that debuted that year. The tool was subsequently trained further and evolved through concerts with various pianists until early 2025, when the duo with Ignasi Terraza was formed. Since then, Salembier and Terraza have been working together to adapt the system to the pianist’s musical vision. This has driven the development of new tools and expanded concepts such as the rhythmic and harmonic responses that will be heard at this concert.
Video of the ImprovIA presentation concert in October 2025
