Festival 2025

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Liquid Room XII: A Perfect Life

A hypnotic music marathon orbiting Robert Ashley

Friday 12 September, at 19:30–23:00

The Norwegian Opera & Ballet

160–360 kr

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Daydreams and sonic streams merge into a fluid concert experience.

Liquid Room XII – A Perfect Life is woven around Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives – a late-1970s television opera portraying small-town America, with its mundane rituals, trivial moments, and quiet desires.

Ashley described his music as "aethereal", with rapid, almost hypnotic streams of speech gliding into ambient and electronic textures and a dreamlike sonic landscape: «Jeg er i en slags dagdrøm når jeg kan høre ord med musikk.» In Liquid Room XII, Ashley's universe merges with other unique musical expressions:

Eivind Buene’s Mahler Mixtapes, where elements of romanticism and pop music blend side by side.
Øyvind Torvund’s playfulness and Lars Petter Hagen’s meditations on nostalgia and time.
Sarah Nemtsov’s dark, intense expression and Bára Gísladóttir’s deep, vibrating soundscapes.
Laurie Anderson’s iconic O Superman.
Tom Johnson algorithmic minimalism.
Jennifer Walshe’s AI-generated Irish folk songs.
Jessie Cox’s three-part work, spun from improvisation and afrofuturism.

The performers include the Belgian Ictus Ensemble, the Norwegian trio POING, and the Swiss ensemble Contrechamps — joined by soprano Nina Guo, composer Eivind Buene (vocals), and dancer–actor–performer Tarek Halaby. Together, they form an international line-up of strong individual voices, woven into a musical journey of pulsing connections and poetic parallels.

Programme

Robert Ashley
Tap Dancing in the Sand (1982)
Perfect Lives, Act 3: The Bank (Victimless Crime) (1983)

Laurie Anderson
O Superman (1981)

Eivind Buene
Mahler mixtape (2020–2025)

Jessie Cox
The Drum is a Tree I (2024)
Re(mnants): of Woods and Skins (2024)
The Drum is a Tree II (2024)

Bára Gísladóttir
all be, all play, all slaughter (2025, world premiere)

Sarah Nemtsov
Implicated Amplification (2014)

Tom Johnson
Rational Melody X and XV (1982)

Jennifer Walshe
From Trí Amhrán (Three Songs) (2019)

Bryn Harrison
Five Miniatures in Three Parts (2008)

Øyvind Torvund
Giants of Jazz (1999–2001)

Lars Petter Hagen
Kronologi (2003)

Read more about the programme on Ictus' homepage.

Facts

A Liquid Room is a multi-hour concert format developed by Ictus Ensemble. Move around at your own pace, pause to recharge or engage with fellow listeners over refreshments and conversation, and let the music reverberate.
Ictus on their Liquid Rooms: "Instantaneous production vies with premeditated works, distracted listening vies with restless listening, but, in the end, you can no longer tell: the accumulated effect blurs the outlines."
The format continues ideas from the Nuove Sincronie experiments of 1990s Milan—a way of listening to contemporary music like at a club night or rock concert.