Robert Ashley remains one of the most radical and visionary figures in American experimental music. A pioneer in using the voice as a compositional and performative tool, Ashley broke new ground with his unique form of “spoken opera”, where text, narrative and sound merge in strange ways.
Before the founding of MAZE, several of its members had already worked closely with Ashley in the earlier incarnation of the group, Ensemble MAE. That collaboration culminated in the recording of the CD Tap Dancing in the Sand, which featured several of Ashley’s instrumental works, gems within his largely voice-centric oeuvre.
Building on this earlier collaboration, MAZE later undertook performances of Ashley’s mysterious In Memoriams, a series of works that reflect on the classical performance traditions of European music through the lens of American cultural identity.
In Memoriams deconstructs four canonical European musical forms: Concerto, Quartet, Symphony, and Opera, and reimagines them. Rather than imitating or referencing these forms directly, Ashley reduces them to their conceptual core and overlays them with metaphors drawn from four corresponding American historical roles.
In stripping each form to its sonic and social essence, Ashley doesn’t just memorialise Western art music — he reinvents it through the framework of American innovation and identity.