As a pioneer in American experimental music,composer Robert
Ashley is a direct descendant of the Charles Ives/Henry Cowell/John
Cage tradition.Sometimes controversial, his large-scale collaborative
performance works have pointed the way to new uses of language
in a musical setting, and his current works, operas for television
entitled PERFECT LIVES and ATLANTA (ACTS OF GOD), are continuations
of his long-time interest in and use of visual media to express
musical ideas. Writing in All American Music, John Rockwell has
said, "Although his interests have shifted and the sound
of his music has changed, a core of concerns has defined his work:
'conceptual art', electronic music, minimalism and a new kind
of musical theater involving are consideration of the collaborative
process that has heretofore defined 'opera'."
Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1930 and
educated at the University of Michigan and the Manhattan School
of Music. His musical development was influenced by the ideas
and compositions of John Cage, and his early works reflect attempts
to invoke this spontaneity. "I learned music from listening
to jazz," he recalls. But I realized that music was not as
abstract as I had imagined. The stories that were told by jazz
music were stories that I didn't grow up with. At a certain point
I realized that neither was I European--and especially not European
from the nineteenth century." The late '50s and early'60s
were a busy time for Ashley as he explored the experimental world
of multimedia, intermedia, and"happenings". From 1957
to 1964, he collaborated with visual artist Milton Cohen on Space
Theater productions involving light projections, dance, sculpture
and electronic sound improvisation. He co-founded the Cooperative
Studio for Electronic Music in Ann Arbor and during the '60s organized
and directed the ONCE Group, a music-theater collaborative that
toured the United States.In 1969, Ashley settled in California
and served as the Director of the Center for Contemporary Music
at Mills College in Oakland.
Ashley believes strongly in the collaborative process.
Rejecting the conventional concept of aesthetic hierarchies, he
maintains that "the idea is old fashioned and suggests accompaniment....Technique
of profound collaboration is essential." In his collaborations,
Ashley seeks to "use the full imagination of the artists
in an arrangement that has a single goal--a single authorship--producing
a work that is a composite of imaginations" he says.
Ashley has found television to be the artistic medium
best suited to large-scale collaboration. "the possibility
of a profound level of collaboration among a large group of individual
artists without the umbrella of an institutional organization
is crucial to what is happening in the performing arts in the
United States today," says Ashley. "and it is especially
encouraging in the present development of television is an art
medium," he says, predicting that television"...might
be the best place in which Contemporary opera could find a new
form." Ashley's first opera for television was MUSIC WITH
ROOTS IN THE AETHER(1974), which has since been shown worldwide
in closed-circuit installations.
In 1978, the Kitchen in New York City commissioned
PERFECT LIVES, an opera for television in seven half-hour episodes.
"In the scope of its ambition and the sheer scale of its
production, PERFECT LIVES is a milestone both in video and in
music, a brilliant collaboration among a host of important artists,"wrote
Charles Hagen in Art-forum. "Ashley's text, alternately lyrical
and farcical, trite and obscure, mystical and vernacular, combines
with his deadpan singsong delivery,Blue Gene Tyranny's elegant
bar-piano improvisations, Peter Gordon's syntho-rhythms, and Jill
Kroesen and David Van Tieghem's performances to produce a hypnotic,
deeply affecting experience."
Rockwell calls PRIVATE LIVES the "summation of
every-thing Ashley has been working on for years," saying
that "the overall impact is far more complex than what might
be suggested by the outwardly bland simplicity of the text and
of the sometimes deliberate triviality of the music. Everything
contributes to the whole, just as Wagner first conceived his 'total
works of art' as organisms that superseded each Component and
imbued all of them with life." The piece was broadcast in
Great Britain over seven consecutive nights, and an excerpt was
presented at the 1983 OPERA America Annual Conference.
Ashley is presently completing a half-hour television
program entitled ATLANTA STRATEGY which is based on his opera,
ATLANTA (ACTS OF GOD), and writing a quartet of operas for stage
and television entitled NOW ELEANOR'S IDEA. The first of the quartet,
lMPROVEMENT (DON LEAVES LINDA), will be part of the National Institute
for Music Theater's workshop program in the spring of 1985 and
will tour Europe and be presented in New York later in the year.
Référence: http://www.uakron.edu/ssma/composers/Ashley.shtml