Welcome to Islands: the wondrous island kingdom of composer Richard Ayres and artist duo Nest. Together, they map culture and nature of a number of imaginary islands for you.
They present the spectacular result in a concert with the adventurous musicians of Asko|Schönberg. Islands is a surprising combination of live acoustic music, electronics and a grand theatrical installation combining visual art, photography, performance and video.

Islands is on-and-off Ayres: cracklingly imaginative, humorous, eclectic, quirky and colourful.
Once upon a time, Islands began as an idea for a kind of DIY kit to build your own dream island. Useful and hopeful in a time of global uncertainty. Inspiration for this idea came from the book The Atlas of Remote Islands by German Judith Schalansky and the memories of his childhood that the book brought back to Richard Ayres. Growing up on the Atlantic coast, as a child he used to float across the seven seas at night using his bed as a boat. For Ayres, creating all the non-existent islands is part of his thought-experiment prompted in times of the Corona pandemic and climate crisis: 'Perhaps, I thought, the ancient art of dreaming or imagining might be the future of travel if our planet is to survive. An interesting thought-experiment.' 
During his Islands trip, the composer was overtaken by uncertain reality along the way. His Islands ran into some absurdist, raw-realist, melancholic and parodic edges because of it.

Strong visual art
Artist duo Nest (i.e. mother and daughter Wiesje Peels and Trijntje Keijser) developed their own image of his islands at the invitation of BredaPhoto in close cooperation with Ayres. They do so entirely in their signature familial DIY style, building on their own strong visual world and connecting seamlessly with Richard Ayres' work.

Richard Ayres & Asko|Schönberg
Asko|Schönberg played the 2018 (co-)commission The Garden both live and in a special pandemic-infused online version recorded among the bulb fields. 'One of the best things ever in my life,' Richard said of it. The Garden is an absurdist and eclectic road trip where Purcell is effortlessly combined with 'Zappian' and electronic music influences.

In collaboration with BredaPhoto and Nest: Creative Work of Wiesje Peels and Trijntje Keijser
Richard Ayres
Islands - premiere, with support of Fonds Podiumkunsten
Asko|Schönberg
Jurjen Hempel conductor
Nest: Wiesje Peels & Trijntje Keijser, artist duo stage image 
Images of the world premiere at Muziekgebouw aan 't Ij Amsterdam on the 8th of December 2022
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