Ensemble MAE | Robert Ashley

Robert Ashley will be the sole composer featured in a concert by Dutch MAE Ensemble. A pioneer of contemporary American music, Ashley has worked in various projects with the ensemble, for which he also wrote several pieces, including Tap Dancing in the Sand and Ideas About Thinking. Offering a number of German premières, this portrait concert presents a selection of Ashley’s music ranging from the beginning of his career and the open notation of In memoriam…Esteban Gomez to the melodic clarity of Outcome Inevitable and the text-based music of Tap Dancing in the Sand. Robert Ashley is famous for developing radically new forms of opera. Often using music and language as equal means of artistic expression, his works address specifically American themes, telling stories or giving a voice to spontaneous ideas and philosophical issues. His plots centre on seemingly banal occurrences of daily life or on individual life stories. Thus Hidden Similarities documents the life of a former hippie and a tragic accident at sea while In memoriam…Esteban Gomez commemorates a sixteenth-century explorer from Spain. The sounds float through boundless space, constant as the ocean swell.