Mixed Blessings, Indiana by Robert Ashley by samuel stoll

In Robert Ashley’s ‚Mixed Blessings, Indiana’, an arbitrary choice of advertising leaflets for books of contemporary American trivial literature serves as pool for a Rhaeto- Romanic recital of the books’ translated title, author, abstract, hard- and soft cover number, e-book number, and empostazium label. These emotion-free texts allow an impersonal transmittance of the language that carries in it a very own rhythm, a microstructure that is captured by the instruments and the musicians’ voices. Ashley’s score gives 16 sequences in a composed order that is fixed, whereas the choice of sequences is not and can be chosen freely. Thus, the individual scores eventually unite, forming a dense image (of sound).
Recording of the Worldpremiere at Roulette in New York on the 11.12.13.
Horn and Voice: Samuel Stoll
Cello and Voice: Moritz Müllenbach
Synthesizer and Voice: Simone Keller