Max Richter's While The Flood Rages is out now, and he plays Mumbai's NMACC on 24 October

Max Richter's new album, While The Flood Rages, came out on Decca Records on Friday, 16 October 2026. Six days later, on 24 October, the British-German composer is listed to play the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC) in Mumbai.

If Richter is new to you: he is the modern-classical composer behind The Blue Notebooks (2004) and the eight-hour Sleep (2015), and a writer of film and television scores. His music sits between orchestral writing, electronics and ambient, and it is a regular presence on study, sleep and late-night playlists around the world.

The album

While The Flood Rages is a companion to MaddAddam, the ballet Richter wrote with choreographer Wayne McGregor, inspired by Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy. The ballet was co-commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Opera House. It is Richter and McGregor's third major collaboration, after Infra and Woolf Works.

It is not a soundtrack. Richter's label says the record is a standalone work: he took the ballet material apart and rebuilt it, in his words, into "a trajectory that makes sense just through listening". It runs across three acts, with an orchestra and a choir arriving in the final act. The first single, "Now We Can Sing", also closes the album. The title track is "While The Flood Rages", and other titles include "The City Was a Chaos", "Quiet", "Tell The Bees" and "Data Ballistics".

The album is on streaming services now, and CD and vinyl editions are on sale through Deutsche Grammophon's store. The label has also said it will run listening events around the world in the coming weeks, with details still to come.

Mumbai on 24 October

Richter's official live calendar lists a date at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex on 24 October 2026, billed as pieces from In A Landscape and The Blue Notebooks. That means a programme drawn from his 2024 solo piano album and his best-loved early record, not necessarily the new one. Local listings give a 7:30pm start. We could not find a public ticket link or prices at the time of writing, so check NMACC's own channels before planning a trip.

His next listed date after Mumbai is Tashkent on 27 October.

For more of what is happening live in the city, see our gig guide.