Relâche New Music Ensemble: American Experimental Masters	Print Issue
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Relâche (left), Philadelphia’s renowned new music ensemble, presents American Experimental Masters: Ashley and Wolff, featuring guest baritone singer Thomas Buckner, on Sunday, April 10 at 3 p.m., in Widener Hall at the Penn Museum.

Tickets are $15; $10 for Penn Museum members in advance or at the door, while supplies last. Admission for students with ID is $5 (and free for accompanying second student), at the door only. Concert tickets may be used to enter and explore the Museum’s international galleries after 2 p.m. on the day of the concert (the special exhibition The Golden Age of King Midas (Almanac February 9, 2016) requires an additional $5 admission). Advance concert tickets may be purchased online at www.penn.museum/calendar

Exploring the Music of Experimental Masters

For this program, the mixed octet of winds, strings, keyboard and percussion is joined by new music baritone, Thomas Buckner, who sings in two works and also leads the ensemble in an improvisation. Mr. Buckner’s long career has included performing over 100 works composed for him, working with improvisers like Roscoe Mitchell, and founding performance series and record labels on both the east and west coasts. He currently leads and performs for the Interpretations series at Brooklyn’s Roulette theater and produces recordings for Mutable Music. His long association with celebrated American composer Robert Ashley (1930-2014) included many new opera collaborations, including the work to be performed April 10, World War III (Just the Highlights).

The ensemble also performs Outcome Inevitable, which it commissioned from Mr. Ashley in 1991 and subsequently recorded on a CD of the same name. Outcome offers a hypnotic string of wind solos shadowed by gossamer sounds from keyboard and viola, with a relentlessly gentle beat from bass and percussion, both constant and unpredictable.

In 2007, Relâche commissioned another major figure in experimental music, Christian Wolff, to compose Grete, which he dedicated to the memory of his childhood piano teacher Grete Sultan, who died in 2005 at the age of 99. Ms. Sultan, a friend of John Cage, sent Mr. Wolff to Mr. Cage for composition lessons. It was Mr. Wolff who introduced Mr. Cage to the I Ching, the ancient Chinese divination book, which came to play such a large role in Mr. Cage’s use of chance procedures. Mr. Wolff’s Grete also leaves much to chance, or to decisions made by the players in Relâche. His other work on the program, 37 Haiku, dedicated to and sung by Mr. Buckner, is a setting of the poem by John Ashbery. The poem in 37 lines does not follow the usual syllable count, and can even be read as a satire of the American haiku tradition.