Dear Nathan, Thanks again for your incomparable help in Zurich. I couldn't and wouldn't have done it without you. I must admit that the "retrospective" occasion is getting to be sort of a chore, in spite of the amazing preparation that you put into it. I guess the accumulated knowledge of how those piece are to be played is being accumulated in you. Probably the fervor will die down in the near future, only to be resumed briefly when I am no longer available. So, you might be asked to do it again. There is nothing immediately in the future, but I'm sure something will come up. Your "Tap Dancing..." gets better all the time. You can take more liberties as you feel it, if the occasion arises again. You have a wonderful sense of what can be done with English. Thanks again, Bob. I would write more, except that I came home to a fierce amount of e-mail that I am struggling with. The ride home, though uneventful, was unusually tiring. I guess I have just been in too many airplanes. Very best. —Robert Ashley, 2006

The speaker Nathan Fuhr was the one responsible for the highlights of the evenings. His intimacy to Ashley’s music was revealed in the stunningly many-voiced solo Yes, But Is It Edible? and the suggestive She Was A Visitor. Continuing with the theme of language and its musical exploration, Tap Dancing In The Sand was the central piece of the following day’s concert. In this well over 20-minute piece, the speech rhythm of the speaker is picked up by the instruments and compacted into an elaborately patterned sound-tapestry, which was brought into full hypnotic effect by the MAE Ensemble. — "Language and Ritual", Neue Züricher Zeitung, April 2006 

Ignaz Schick is a turntablist, sound artist, performer & composer. After college he briefly studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and worked for several years as an assistent for the contemporary composer Josef Anton Riedl. From the middle of the nineties onwards his interest and activities almost completely shifted towards live-electronics and after testing various instrumentations (hard- & software samplers, signal processing, contact mics, field recordings, …) he developed his own and quite unique electro-acoustic set-up which he calls “rotating surfaces”. Various objects and materials (from wood, metal, plastic, paper or violin bows and cymbals) are played directly on the rotating metal plate of the turntable and the vibrations are simply amplified with a small condensator microphone. Since 2005 he has realized several sound installations and has frequently given lectures & workshops about experimental turntablism and improvisation.