robert ashley

Recent developments: I bought myself the "Perfect Lives" DVD set as a birthday present, loving it. I think I do prefer the LP versions of both The Bar & The Backyard/The Park, but the DVD really is something to see. I think some parts of it make my roommates feel weird or strange. S. is pre-occupied with the hands playing piano, hates the glitter.

Also, I just got Atalanta in the mail today. It's going to take me months to digest.

Great way to treat yrself - well done!

ian, you going? I wish I were.

http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/shows/robert-ashley-three-operas_149438/

January 15-25, 2009

holy jeeze, it looks like i have to, huh?

Three men have loved her. One a decade, on the average.

― ian, Saturday, February 23, 2008 9:04 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark

CALLING ALL LONDONERS

http://www.ica.org.uk/Robert%20Ashley%3A%20Foreign%20Experiences+19567.twl

this is on in glasgow on friday too but i've already bought tickets to see le ballets c de la b. infuriating overlap!

Yeah there was another improv gig on the same day, too - you can't win 'em all

Wow, that first link (from 4 yrs ago) still works. And is awesome.

Oh yeah its UBU web, its gonna work

Here is an Ashley interview ahead of next Wednesday's concert.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article6180594.ece

thanks for the link.
i can't wait 'til the next Ashley performance in NYC--god knows when it will be, but the last three were amazing (despite some fuck-ups on Buckner's part, but whatev.)

I'll read as many sneak preview quotes from his upcoming book on Ashley as Gann decides to post - http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/06/drawing_the_connections.html#comments

"The only thing that's interesting to me right now is that, up to me and a couple of other guys, music had always been about the eventfulness: like, when things happened, and if they happened, whether they would be a surprise, or an enjoyment, or something like that... It's about eventfulness. And I was never interested in eventfulness. I was only interested in sound. I mean, just literally, sound in the Morton Feldman sense.... There's a quality in music that is outside of time, that is not related to time. And that has always fascinated me... That's sort of what I'm all about, from the first until the most recent. A lot of people are back into eventfulness. But it's very boring. Eventfulness is really boring."

cool, looking forward to this!

Ooooh, had no idea this was in the works. Looks awesome.

three men have loved here--one a decade on the average.

d'oh, her.

Busted out Automatic Writing recently, man what piece. How rarely do you come across that "What's going on here?" sort of feeling.

Love this bit from Steven Stapleton:

"A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambience and the 'breathing' of the building."

Taking acid and listening to Automatic Writing is not my idea of a good time, but to each his own.

A Missing Sense is a great record! Or, I guess i have it on tape. whatever.

Three men have loved her. One a decade, on the average.

― ian, Saturday, February 23, 2008 9:04 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark

― ian, Monday, January 26, 2009 11:21 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark

looking forward to Kyle Gann's book on Ashley

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/08/iliad_of_the_midwest.html#comments

hope he's writing this as fast as he's blogging about it, I can't wait to read it

one of his earlier blog posts mentions the first complete performance of 'Perfect Lives' at Northwestern University, the tape lost somewhere in their archives:

It was my favorite version of Perfect Lives ever, just Bob and "Blue" with a drone on a background tape, before Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem and a dozen other elements were added in for a kind of information overload. It was still like his "Yellow Album" that came out that year.

idea of all seven parts played live in the manner of that first LP makes me want to buy a plane ticket & offer to help them look for that tape

really looking forward to kyle's book on ashley.

this may seem weird but this article changed my life:

http://www.kylegann.com/JIreasons.html

stumbled across it as a clueless 17 year old not really wanting to pursue classical music any further. i read this and it opened up a whole new world for me.

Gann's book "American Music" is hands-down the best book on new music ever written-- very expensive, as I remember it, but one hell of a book. funnily enough, i leant it out to a professor of mine and am having dinner with her tonight, so i can finally have it with me again.

"The only thing that's interesting to me right now is that, up to me and a couple of other guys, music had always been about the eventfulness: like, when things happened, and if they happened, whether they would be a surprise, or an enjoyment, or something like that... It's about eventfulness. And I was never interested in eventfulness. I was only interested in sound. I mean, just literally, sound in the Morton Feldman sense.... There's a quality in music that is outside of time, that is not related to time. And that has always fascinated me... That's sort of what I'm all about, from the first until the most recent. A lot of people are back into eventfulness. But it's very boring. Eventfulness is really boring."

But isn't Morton Feldman's sense of sound filtered through his erm 'elastic' feel for time's passage?!?

Can't wait for Gann's book.

Carl's still president over at the bank, ain't he?

What's that Ashley opera set at the airport, with the couple who've had the fight in Mexico or wherever and they're both leaving, and the voices are all treated? I sort of regret not buying that when I saw it used, now.

I think that one is "Improvement (Don Leaves Linda)" maybe? I'm not super familiar with it tbh.

Yeah, Don Leaves Linda. Not sure what the hang up at the listening station was. It's weird when art hooks you long after you've rejected it. I remember doing that with this early-ish Kundera story, recently. You don't even realize how fundamental something is until you go away and it comes back to you under your hypnagogic state.

disc 2 of Improvement is where it catches fire. disc 2 track 4/5, 'The Doctor' / 'The Offering Of Images', that's one of my all time favorite Ashley pieces. and 'Tarzan', that's a truly strange song.

'in that pwermanent state of wapture you are mentally OK'

has this been posted before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWBB3KgAk94

new Ashley book out 12/15/09: "Outside of Time"
http://www.lovely.com/books/bookslist.html#anchor1307922

Q'est-ce que c'est?????

more great posts as he moves towards the book

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/02/the_curse_of_the_recital.html
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/02/erasing_the_timeline.html

http://lovely.com/titles/cd3303.html

god the new one is really something

definitely the most straightforward one in a little while as far as the narratives are concerned, and hamilton's music really fits with it this time around

I saw Ashley & Humbert perform the last two of these live at Mills about ten years ago. but the first piece is so disjointed and crazy it might even be my favorite, his voice has gotten so strange, the sound of someone drifting off to sleep at the end of every single sentence he speaks

what's the new one?

its a sequel (?) to atalanta, i havent heard it.

plax linked it -- evidently Atalanta is staged with modular stories which are faded up and down at different moments, making every performance slightly different, and the new album is 3 of the complete stories presented all the way through.

before this one, I liked 'Foreign Experiences' the most of all the ones he's put out in the last 10 years -- it's really paranoid, has a high density of memorable lines -- though that one's more a Sam Ashley showcase than a Robert one. and 'Now Eleanor's Idea' takes a bit of work, but by the end of the last 20 minute piece, it really pays off. 'Dust', 'Celestial Experiences' & 'Concrete' are all kind of samey ensemble operas with good moments but some of the musical settings just kind of snap me out of the mood

the new one though, played it four times in the last week already

ok, i wasn't sure if you were talking about the same release.

but atalanta 2 seems to be parts of the original opera that didn't make it on to disc first time around so are they new recordings or old?

i haven't loved any of them after Improvement, and i really loved that, although i liked bits and pieces.

bits and pieces of the stuff that came after that, i mean.

the stories date from the original opera but these are new recordings

though they're very very similiar to the versions I remember from the Mills concert 10 years ago -- might be exactly the same backing music. but you can tell these are recent recordings, ashley has never sounded this diffuse. or... old, basically

it's odd how my favorite two of the recent deluge of Ashley sets have been the ones that showcase other performers, Sam Ashley & Joan LaBarbara, so even on those, you kind of feel like something's missing (i.e. Bob). but the first disc on the new one is ALL about his voice. the second disc of the new one is mostly a Jacqueline Humbert showcase, even most of the stories clearly come from her, but Ashley's punchlines every few seconds are the glue

Somehow I thought "Improvement" was much later than it was. Scratch my previous point about not loving anything that came after it.

Milton, does the section known as "flying Saucer Dialogue" (which was on the "Music from Mills"compilation) turn up on this new release? i absolutely love that. who is the woman on that?

-Particles of what?
-Paticles of the subject, Sir
-Coming up through the monitors?
...
-Where is it now?
-Who knows?
-That tone is not allowed, Lieutenant
-I'm sorry, Sir
-The answer then?
-It comes and goes...
-Intermittent?
-Precisely, Sir

no, that's just another bizarre satellite track. the woman is a very young jacqueline humbert, and the keyboards / sound design is paul shorr so that track is kind of like a trial run for the original recording of atalanta in 1985

Flying Saucer has come to Earth for important information concerning humans: The Marriage of Atalanta. Problem: Apples.

d'oh, her.

― ian, Thursday, 16 July 2009 02:23 (1 year ago)

yeah, i've become near-obsessed with ashley in the past year and a half; this is pretty welcome right now.

― mike powell, Saturday, September 15, 2007 6:08 AM (3 years ago)

world = small

very titantically.

i mean... titanically.

you know you've got to hold me tighter yeah

closer?