Happy New Ear 2025, ICTUS

In the organizer's words:

The musical kick-off to the new year will take place in 2025 with the renowned ICTUS Ensemble from Brussels, which has been a guest at numerous international institutions and festivals for many years, often in co-productions with choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. One of the ensemble's unusual concert formats is THE LIQUID ROOM, where the audience can move freely and actively switch between different listening moods. In HELLERAU, ICTUS presents a special edition of its LIQUID ROOMS in the new Immersive Sounds series with works by Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson and Jessie Cox.

In 1983, Peter Greenaway portrayed Philip Glass, John Cage, Meredith Monk and Robert Ashley in "Four American Composers" in terms of their significance for the development of American music. In the 1960s, Ashley organized a festival where he juxtaposed pieces in the style of Fluxus, contemporary chamber music and punk. His own compositions, which he described as "music with roots in the ether", are an expression of great creative freedom and minimalist structures. Also in 1983, "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson was premiered in Brooklyn as part of her eight-hour cycle "United States": simultaneously monumental and seemingly loosely assembled, consisting of video and still images, avant-garde and pop music, spoken text, gestural performance and playful electronics. Today, the installation can be seen at the MoMA in New York. Jessie Cox is a young Swiss drummer, composer and researcher with roots in Trinidad and Tobago, who grew up in Switzerland in the 1990s and currently lives in New York. He has worked with the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Ensemble Modern and the JACK Quartet, among others. His triptych, which he wrote especially for this ICTUS concert project, brings together two protagonists with paradoxical modes of existence: the song of extinct bird species and the so-called talking drum.