City Life

Steve Reich’s work has a pulse that lends itself ideally to translating the atmosphere of a metropolis into music. For City Life, he hit the streets to record the sounds of New York. Conversations, car horns and car alarms, a pile driver, slamming doors, as well as the beating of a heart. Played on samplers, they form the foundation of Reich’s ode to the city. He conjures up New York, in its unflappable vastness and its hecticness.

Pulse is also the foundation for Double Sextet, originally written for an ensemble playing against a recording of themselves. The rhythms of the two parts interlock in fast and slow dances. British composer Tansy Davies was commissioned by Asko|Schönberg to write Canopies of Liquid Light, in which she gives musical form to connections between the netherworld and the invisible forces of the cosmos. People's interconnectedness with their environment is one of the themes in Davies' work.

After the concert:

Echoes of Nothing
Monthly fringe programme in collaboration with Conservatorium van Amsterdam 

Inspired by the quote ‘Every something is an echo of nothing’ by composer John Cage, three students from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Dániel Bolba, Lisa Schreiber and Sean Haid) are curating their own concert series. The mini concerts reflect on concerts from the programming in the Grand Hall and offer a new perspective on the concert experience.

Programme booklet (Dutch)