Robert Ashley facts for kids

Robert Reynolds Ashley (March 28, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American composer. He was famous for his television operas and other stage shows. Many of his works used electronic sounds and special musical methods.

His pieces often told stories that were connected in unusual ways. They mixed sound, theater, and writing in a dream-like style. People still perform his works today. Some of his well-known pieces include Automatic Writing (1979) and Perfect Lives (1983).

Life and Music Career

Robert Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1948 to 1952. There, he met Ross Lee Finney, a respected musician.

Ashley later studied at the Manhattan School of Music. He then became a musician in the US Army. After the army, he worked at the University of Michigan's Speech Research Laboratories. He chose to focus on his music instead of getting a doctorate degree.

From 1961 to 1969, Ashley helped organize the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor. He worked with other local composers and artists like Roger Reynolds and Gordon Mumma. He also helped start the ONCE Group.

Ashley was a member of the Sonic Arts Union. This group included other experimental musicians like David Behrman and Alvin Lucier. In 1969, he became the director of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Later, he led the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music.

Most of Ashley's music was released by Lovely Music. This company was started by Performing Artservices, which helped manage Ashley and other artists. His first album with Lovely Music was Private Parts in 1978. This was an early version of parts of Perfect Lives.

Starting in the 1980s, Ashley formed a band that played for many years. It included himself, Sam Ashley, Joan LaBarbara, Thomas Buckner, and Jacqueline Humbert as singers. Tom Hamilton played electronic instruments.

Ashley also worked with other artists by reading texts. He read William Gibson's electronic poem Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) in 1992. This reading, called The Transmission, was recorded and sent to other cities only once.

In his later years, other performers began to play Ashley's music. The electronic group Matmos performed parts of Perfect Lives. The band Varispeed also presented long versions of Perfect Lives. Alex Waterman created a new Spanish version called Vidas Perfectas.

In 2002, Ashley received the John Cage Award. In 2014, after his death, the Whitney Biennial showed three of his operas. These included Vidas Perfectas and Crash, which he finished just before he died.

Personal Life and Passing

Robert Ashley had a son named Sam with his first wife, Mary Tsaltas. In 1979, he married his second wife, Mimi Johnson.

He passed away at his home in Tribeca on March 3, 2014. He was 83 years old and died from liver disease.

Robert Ashley's Operas

Ashley wrote many operas and other musical pieces. These works used instruments, voices, and electronic sounds. You can find a full list on his official website.

Here are some of his operas:

• 1959-1960 "Christopher Columbus Crosses to the New World"
• 1960 "The Bottleman"
• 1963 "In Memoriam...Esteban Gomez"
• 1963 "In Memoriam...Crazy Horse"
• 1963 "In Memoriam...Kit Carson"
• 1964 "The Wolfman"
• 1967-1968 "That Morning Thing"
• 1968 "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon"
• 1968 "The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer and unknown accomplices for crimes against humanity"
• 1972-1973 "In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women"
• 1974-1979 "Automatic Writing"
• 1976 "Music with Roots in the Aether" (a TV opera)
• 1976-1983 "Perfect Lives" (a TV opera)
• 1979 "Yellow man with heart with wings"
• 1979 "A last Futile Stab at Fun"
• 1981-1987 "Atalanta (Acts of God)"
• 1982 "Tap Dancing in the Sand"
• Now Eleanor's Idea (a series of four operas):
  • 1985-1990 "Improvement: Don Leaves Linda"
  • 1987-1992 "eL/Aficionado"
  • 1993 "Now Eleanor's Idea"
  • 1994 "Foreign Experiences"
• 1998 "Dust"
• 1998 "Your Money My Life Goodbye"
• 2003 "Celestial Excursions"
• 2011 "Quicksand"
• 2006-2012 "Concrete/The Old Man Lives in Concrete"
• 2013-2014 "Crash"

Space Theater and the ONCE Festival

The Space Theater was a special performance area. It was designed for shows with projected images and music. From 1957 to 1964, it hosted many multimedia performances. Gordon Mumma and Ashley created live electronic music for these shows.

Ashley and Mumma started the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in 1958. They were "serious tinkers in electronics." They built much of their own equipment because synthesizers were not yet common. They were among the first composers to create live music using amplified small sounds.

The success of Space Theater led to the ONCE festival. This event showcased experimental art and music. Ashley was the director. Other artists like Roger Reynolds and Mary Ashley also took part. There were six ONCE festivals between 1961 and 1965. They were seen as new and exciting, and they influenced modern music.

Ashley's Opera Trilogy

Ashley created a trilogy of operas: Perfect Lives, Atalanta, and Now Eleanor's Idea. These operas mostly keep a steady beat of 72 beats per minute.

The third part of Perfect Lives ("The Bank") is a key event in this trilogy. Strange things happen at the bank. For example, dogs speaking Spanish fight, and a bucket of water is thrown. It turns out the bank has no money. This happens because of a clever "art/crime" by two characters, Gwyn and Ed.

Ashley introduces the bank tellers in this part. Each teller has a vision that relates to one of the trilogy's operas.

• Kate sees security camera footage from the bank.
• Linda, Susie, and Jennifer see visions of three characters from Atalanta.
• Eleanor's vision is about the four operas named after her.

The first part of the opera Now Eleanor's Idea, called Improvement, retells these events.

The Now Eleanor's Idea Series

Now Eleanor's Idea is a series of four operas. It is part of the larger trilogy. This series is about traveling westward across America to the Pacific Ocean. Each opera focuses on one character first seen in Perfect Lives.

The order of the operas is:

• Improvement (about Linda, a bank teller)
• el/Aficionado (about Don Jr.)
• Foreign Experiences (about Junior Jr., Don and Linda's son)
• Now Eleanor's Idea (about Eleanor, another teller)

These operas are subtly linked in their stories. Perfect Lives leads into Now Eleanor's Idea (the single opera). This part focuses on Eleanor's journey. She goes from a small-town bank teller to a TV news reporter. Don's story is in Foreign Experiences. He moves to California and becomes a professor. Linda's story, Improvement (Don Leaves Linda), is about her being left by her husband. She meets many people and settles down with her son.

Ashley, along with other singers, performed the complete series in 1994. Recordings of these operas were released over several years.

Deeper Meanings in the Trilogy

Ashley gave different meanings to parts of his trilogy. One meaning is the journey of people moving westward across America.

• Atalanta represents those in the new world who remember their old traditions.
• Perfect Lives shows life in the Midwest, which Ashley found interesting because it was flat.
• Now Eleanor's Idea is about the journey to the West Coast. This is seen as the end of a certain way of life.

Ashley also said the three works represent "architecture, agriculture, and genealogy."

He also described the Now Eleanor's Idea series as showing four types of American religion:

• Judaism in Improvement
• Pentecostal Evangelism in Foreign Experiences
• "Corporate mysticism" in el/Aficionado
• Roman Catholicism from Spain in Now Eleanor's Idea

Automatic Writing

Automatic Writing is a piece that took five years to finish. It was released in 1979. Ashley used his own involuntary speech in the music. He said this speech came from his Tourette syndrome. This was a very new way to create music. Ashley wondered if his Tourette's, which involved making sounds, was linked to his natural talent as a composer.

Ashley was fascinated by his involuntary speech. He was interested in creating music that was unconscious. He felt that speech from Tourette's could not be controlled. This was different from making music on purpose.

At first, Ashley had trouble recording his involuntary speech. He found he was performing it instead of letting it be natural. Later, he recorded 48 minutes of this speech at Mills College. This became one of four "characters" in what he saw as an opera. The other characters were a French translation of the speech, sounds from a Moog synthesizer, and organ harmonies. This piece was Ashley's first big try at telling a musical story using English.

Using Electronics in Automatic Writing

In Automatic Writing, the words themselves were not always the main point. Ashley used electronic tools to change the audio. Some of the speech became hard to understand. Ashley believed that the rhythm and sound of words could carry meaning, even if you couldn't understand the exact words.

Ashley used live electronics and computer circuits to create the first version of the piece. He recorded his own voice very closely. He then added "subtle and eerie changes" to the recording. This made his voice sound very different.

The piece had four vocal parts that changed over time. In the final recording, these parts included Ashley's monologue, a synthesized version, a French translation, and a part made by a Polymoog synthesizer.

The Immortality Songs

While finishing his "grand trilogy," Ashley started working on The Immortality Songs in 1987. This was a series that he worked on for the rest of his life. He knew he might not live to finish it.

These songs focused on "ranting" as a form of uncontrolled speech. Ashley began by listing 49 titles for projects. The rhythm of the title often influenced the rhythm of the music. Some of these projects include:

• Yellow Man with Heart with wings (opera, 1979, remixed 1990)
• Dust (opera, 1998)
• Your Money My Life Goodbye (opera, 1998)
• Celestial Excursions (opera, 2003)
• Concrete (opera, 2006)

Films Featuring Robert Ashley

• 1976 - Music With Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. This film was produced and directed by Robert Ashley.
• 1983 - Perfect Lives (an opera for television). This was released on DVD in 2005.
• 1984 - Atalanta Strategy. This film used parts of the opera and included comments from Ashley.

Books by Robert Ashley

• 1991 - Perfect Lives: an opera. This book contains the words of the opera and talks by Ashley.
• 2000 - Music With Roots in the Aether. This book has written versions of the TV opera.
• 2010 - Outside of Time: Ideas About Music.
• 2011 - Quicksand. This is a novel.
• 2011 - Atalanta (Acts of God). This book has the words of the opera and an afterword by Ashley.
• 2014 - Crash. This book contains the words of the opera.

Exhibitions

• Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives, 2011, Trade (gallery), Nottingham, United Kingdom

See also

In Spanish: Robert Ashley para niños