City Life Asko|Schönberg

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, and a heart beating. 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.

City Life Asko|Schönberg

Location

Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ

Piet Heinkade 1

1019 BR Amsterdam

Show in Google Maps

Contact

visit website

Get tickets from €33

The Beating Heart of a Metropolis

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. For this concert, Tansy Davies was commissioned by Asko|Schönberg to write Canopies of Liquid Light, a musical descent into a subterranean space full of moaning sounds, echoes and whispers. It’s a place where the earth, giving shelter to everything that lives, seems to live itself – one of the themes in Davies’ music.

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.