Maze/Alvin Lucier

Maze are a new music ensemble featuring Anne La Berge (flute and electronics), Dario Calderone (double bass), Gareth Davis (bass clarinet), Reinier van Houdt (piano, keyboards and electronics), Wiek Hijmans (electric guitar) and Yannis Kyriakides (computer and electronics). This CD features a performance of an Alvin Lucier score, which instructed the musicians to, "Go to an outside environment (urban, rural, hostile, benign) and record by any means (memory, written notations, tape recordings) the sound situations of those environments. Returning to an inside performance space at any time later, recreate, solely by means of your voices and instruments, and with the aid of your memory devices (without additions, deletions, improvisation, interpretation) those outside sound situations." The success of such a venture depends on the interpreters' creativity and ability to take such material and create "music" with it. Amsterdam (Memory Space) is a successful creation by those guidelines, in that music of integrity has been fashioned and the strength of the composition has been realised in the arc of the piece. Instruments, voices, samples and electronics wander in and out, as anything may in any city walk by. Is it Amsterdam? Could be. Does it work? Yes it does.