★★☆☆☆An American critic in the 1980s wrote that Robert Ashley’s music was “definitely out there”. Believe me, it hasn’t moved any closer. Monday’s maddening pocket retrospective, part of the London Contemporary Music Festival, proved that the American composer never budged from the experimental universe opened up by John Cage, where the sound of a musician’s squeaky chair is probably more significant than anything the musician plays. Ashley’s work seemed absolutely at home in the white-walled bunker of Ambika P3, which was also a perfect space for projecting the finale, a jazzy, jigging chunk of his television opera, Perfect Lives. The most recent piece, the 2010 work World War Three (Just the Highlights), offered Sam Ashley, the composer’s son, pitching an eccentric spiel about Wagner, El…

Source: The Times December 05, 2017 17:03 UTC