Robert Fleitz – (Auto)biography of Style
Robert Fleitz’s doctoral concert.
Artist
- Robert Fleitz, piano and electronics
Programme
- Jennifer Walshe: becher (2008)
- Jasna Veličković: Good Bach (2001)
- James Layton: Having never known the piano (2025)
- Ryuichi Sakamoto: Sarabande (2023)
- Lena Raine, arr. Trevor Alan Gomes: Scattered and Lost (2018)
- Tania Leon: Tumbao (2004)
- Nino Hellberg: Min/Max (2025)
- Akiko Yamane: State No. 8 (2024)
- Simon Bahr: Counterfeits, Cover-Ups & Karaoke (2024)
- Brian Dozier Brown: Neo-Soul (2025) (world premiere)
- Yuri Umemoto: Mass (2024-25)
About the concert
Robert Fleitz presents (Auto)biographies of Style, a program of solo piano works from the 21st century that demonstrates the radical development and diversity of contemporary musical hybridity. The piano becomes a vehicle for authenticity, each composition rewriting its own story. Historical recordings are parodied and reworked, collaborative processes become the very material of the music, and the legacy of the piano canon is at once rejected and embraced.
What was once a rebellious way of going against the norms of Classical composition is now an integrated part of our musical culture — though perhaps no less subversive. Composers respond to their lived experiences: drawing on popular culture, integrating non-Classical styles, destabilizing the idea of ownership, and reworking the Western canon as a way of dealing with trauma.
Given their collaborative and unpredictable nature, these works add new nuance to the idea of agency in the hybrid musical environment.
This recital is also an exploration of Robert’s own history at the piano, with composers he has admired from afar, grown up alongside in his hometown, and forged new friendships with. These autobiographies — sometimes counterfeit, sometimes real — blur the lines between where Robert ends and the composition begins.
In other words: sometimes the piano becomes a cathedral, sometimes a diary, and sometimes… a game console.
Changes are possible.
Further information: Matti Leisma, matti.leisma@uniarts.fi
Artist
- Robert Fleitz, piano and electronics
Programme
- Jennifer Walshe: becher (2008)
- Jasna Veličković: Good Bach (2001)
- James Layton: Having never known the piano (2025)
- Ryuichi Sakamoto: Sarabande (2023)
- Lena Raine, arr. Trevor Alan Gomes: Scattered and Lost (2018)
- Tania Leon: Tumbao (2004)
- Nino Hellberg: Min/Max (2025)
- Akiko Yamane: State No. 8 (2024)
- Simon Bahr: Counterfeits, Cover-Ups & Karaoke (2024)
- Brian Dozier Brown: Neo-Soul (2025) (world premiere)
- Yuri Umemoto: Mass (2024-25)
About the concert
Robert Fleitz presents (Auto)biographies of Style, a program of solo piano works from the 21st century that demonstrates the radical development and diversity of contemporary musical hybridity. The piano becomes a vehicle for authenticity, each composition rewriting its own story. Historical recordings are parodied and reworked, collaborative processes become the very material of the music, and the legacy of the piano canon is at once rejected and embraced.
What was once a rebellious way of going against the norms of Classical composition is now an integrated part of our musical culture — though perhaps no less subversive. Composers respond to their lived experiences: drawing on popular culture, integrating non-Classical styles, destabilizing the idea of ownership, and reworking the Western canon as a way of dealing with trauma.
Given their collaborative and unpredictable nature, these works add new nuance to the idea of agency in the hybrid musical environment.
This recital is also an exploration of Robert’s own history at the piano, with composers he has admired from afar, grown up alongside in his hometown, and forged new friendships with. These autobiographies — sometimes counterfeit, sometimes real — blur the lines between where Robert ends and the composition begins.
In other words: sometimes the piano becomes a cathedral, sometimes a diary, and sometimes… a game console.
Changes are possible.
Further information: Matti Leisma, matti.leisma@uniarts.fi