AMERICAN VOICES Robert Ashley and New

Alan Lockwood

Dust, Celestial Excursions, and Made Out of Concrete, composed and directed by Robert Ashley, La MaMa E.T.C., January 15–25, 2009.

he recent of Robert tactics of memory and the emotional Ashley—Dust (1998), Celestial realm of old age. Excursions (2003) and Made OutT of Concrete (2007/09)—received As nineteenth-century operatic forms new productions in January in New York such as bel canto mirrored their culture, City, rotating on a ten-night program at Ashley’s operas reflect ours with their La MaMa E.T.C. entitled Robert Ashley speed, incision, and the directness he Three Operas. Ashley, along with the sea- sheathes in off-handed generosity. Since soned ensemble of singers and the crack television came to dominate audience tech team he has worked with—for about expectations, advanced stage works two decades, in most cases—turned the from Beckett’s late monodramas to the theatre’s Annex into a concentrated lab monologues of Spalding Gray and Anna for these wry, austere, and decidedly Deavere Smith have contended with a beautiful works. Each piece had been new manner of passive attention. Ashley retooled since its premiere: Dust, with sees TV as the ideal medium for his a full new staging; Celestial Excursions, work—quick cuts and channel surfing with condensed stagecraft and the addi- seem built into the fabric of his texts— tion of four instrumental preludes in the but his telltale vocal style and spare, third act; and by a thorough shuffling sumptuous music are most powerful in of vocal parts in Made Out of Concrete, live performance. the implementation of a less predictable sequence of musical movements and a The works at La MaMa shared a deft new aria for singer . drive, and this was matched by the exact- As a retrospective of a decade’s work, ing vigor of Ashley’s team. The it was an exceptional opportunity to directed the three operas, with stage experience Ashley’s musical structures design and lighting by David Moodey. and thematic aims. And given that he’s Joan La Barbara and singers Jacqueline seventy-eight, it proved a rarified forum Humbert, Thomas Buckner, and Sam for an experimental master’s views on the Ashley recreated their roles; they have

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 Top: Celestial Excursions, La MaMa E.T.C. Photo: Hiro Ito. Courtesy Performing Artservices. Bottom: Joan Jonas in Celestial Excursions, The Kitchen, 2003. Photo: Mimi Johnson. Courtesy Performing Artservices.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 been originating Ashley’s characters since stretched out under an industrial-blue the composer embarked on his opera mover’s blanket. The uppermost bench tetralogy Now Eleanor’s Idea in the late was left vacant for No Legs, the absent, 1980s. Tom Hamilton has handled live amputee war veteran whose morphine- mixing and sound processing since 1990. induced revelation about an end to “Blue” played synthesizer brutality was at the heart of Dust. An in Dust, and improvised the keyboard alerting swoosh of sonic exhaust ushered accompaniment as performance art- in Ashley’s careworn ruminations on ist Joan Jonas reprised her role as the thought organization and short attention Silent Character in Celestial Excursions. spans. As he introduced his park com- Tyranny has been involved with Ashley panions, the adroit electronic orchestra- since the 1960s; it has been in such cir- tion shifted gears, gradually assembling cumstances of intensive community and a suspension with its poignant chord collaboration that the composer’s oeuvre changes derived from soul and gospel has evolved over the past fifty years. music. Ashley considered the theme of irreversibilities, describing inaccurate The La MaMa productions opened with portraits and the consolation of friends Dust. Six park benches were clustered on then culminating with the war vet’s staggered risers strewn with styrene bins condition (“We don’t grow back legs”). and wire milk crates, before a looming No Legs was a hero among the park backdrop of skyscraper silhouettes that denizens, and Ashley said they would would be utilized in each of the operas. sing some of his songs. He warned that For its premiere in Yokohama in 1998, “this will be kind of confusing,” spicing Dust had an imposing visual design by a melodic elision across the syllables in Yukihiro Yoshihara that featured banks “confusing” that veered his speech-like of video monitors. The new stage design vocalizing into a fleeting tune. by Moodey was produced last year for the Arteforum Festival in Ferrara, Italy, Jacqueline Humbert’s aria melded and situated the opera in the urban park straight and gay beach sex, mismatched described by Ashley during his opening fisticuffs, and Madam Blavatsky’s theoso- song. The mise-en-scène would prove a phy. The first in a sequence of motets, comfortable fit for most of the piece, her intertwined tales were marked or as five homeless characters sounded shadowed by the ensemble’s pulsating, off from their benches in solos and in unison interjections. Though nomi- ensemble sections that at times seemed nally stationary (everyone remained on an impenetrable weave of muted voices. their benches for the duration of Dust), The psycho-linguistics of ranting has Humbert enriched her role with facial been a cornerstone in the composer’s expressions, her hands tracing rhythms method, and for Dust he constructed and inflections of her voice. It was a an exemplary playground. commanding performance, for which the choral phrases might have seemed The ensemble entered, dressed with simple rhythmic support and propul- rumpled ease—Ashley in a light jacket sion. However, in an uncanny instance and brown slacks, La Barbara in a wildly of hiding in plain sight, their comments creased blouse and sleeveless dress, were the wants, grievances, and recollec- with impressive pumps—and Buckner tions of No Legs. What is more, the lingo

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 of his painful memories—morphine a perfect wife pined to taste love once “peanuts” injected by the battlefield more, a quest for ardor that began to medic (“the pizza delivery boy”)—jerked sound like a Faustian plea. In the opera’s those obsessions into the opera’s urban concluding sing-song, Sam Ashley noted setting, as if he were speaking of street dryly that “Patsy made it / Merle made food. What at first listen was a soothing it / Tammy made it / Willie made it / I chorus became, in fact, highly complex didn’t make it.” He sang first of a lonely and utterly human. old codger at a bar then of a lonely old millionaire in the same spot, their hopes After the series of motets, Ashley took a revived by the angel of loneliness. solo that wrapped up an hour of mount- ing orchestral suspension. He said that Dust’s park setting became overly literal No Legs, in speaking of his revelatory during the final songs. As idealized radio conversation with God, had the atten- numbers, they wafted the opera to a tion of everyone in the park. Calling it bemused or bittersweet memory realm “the long song,” Ashley added that No that might have been heightened had Legs’s friends would now strive to do “a each singer been isolated or perhaps lit perfect imitation.” He then took the lead from below. What did carry through role, as each of his colleagues had sung the piece with startling precision was cantus firmis during the motets. But the Cas Bouman’s sound system design. The ensemble had shattered into individual music’s delicate, vivid resonance rendered voices, with the mix further skewed by La MaMa’s air as alive and turbulent as voices dropping in and out over about the material in Ashley’s texts. Swooshing nine minutes of vocal powerhousing. electronic arcs and dangling tom-tom Not loud, plenty sly in its pace, and drum patters came and went in the mix, with only droll organ strains as musical these details as spacious and exact as the accompaniment, the effect was that of conflicts and conundrums the singers having one’s hearing pinned back, in a were enacting onstage. The marvelous wind tunnel of words and voice tones. sound quality Bouman achieved would Rote means of listening were eclipsed, add unobtrusive impact through each as if it were necessary to hear with both of the operas. ears and the whole head. For Celestial Excursions, the ensemble Dust concluded with four songs that had settled in at aligned desks, with Ash- been alluded to by the chorus in Buck- ley’s desk at the left, nearer the front ner’s motet then by Ashley in his solo. of the stage. A lamp and a stack of While in the hospital, No Legs found libretto pages occupied each desktop; solace in the radio fare, and these last the performers would gradually place songs were an attempt to perform some the pages in a new stack, inadvertently of them in his honor. They hinged on marking the progress of the piece. (Dust’s emotional regrets of middle and old age, librettos were in notebooks; Made Out in a sort of anti-pop fodder. Humbert of Concrete would sport hands of over- sang of kids, the PTA and roses received sized poker cards.) Facing the audience from a secret admirer—her line “don’t through the opera, the performers wore get your hopes up” repeated like a velvet pale button-front cardigans, with dusty punch. In Buckner’s song, a friend with white lighting and makeup emphasizing

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 Top: Robert Ashely in Dust, La MaMa E.T.C. Photo: Andrea Mohin. Courtesy Performing Artservices. Bottom: (left to right) Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Sam Ashley, Joan LaBarbara in Made Out of Concrete, Arteforum Festival, Ferrara, Italy, 2008. Photo: Marco Caselli Nirmal. Courtesy Performing Artservices.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 the setting, in an assisted-living facility. proved patient. These unstable musings During the first two acts, decorative pro- concluded with a dream of an American jections played intermittently on the far Indian child on flooded streets from sides of the skyscraper backdrop: shard which the dreamer woke, telling himself patterns, foliage webs, and an elaborate he should write screenplays (drawing splay like a map of interlinking nerves. audience laughter, which peppered each On the riser before the backdrop’s central of the operas). “canyon” were implements that Joan Jonas would work with during the third The second act unified the disparate act: a wolf-head mask, a puffy sheet and mental elements, at least insofar as the her oversized drawing tablets. assisted-living residents sang as a uni- form front. A Q&A session played out As with the park benches in Dust, the between them and a counselor (Ashley). desks in Celestial provided a mise-en-scène, Exasperated with their elusive, unison though little of the opera was occurring answers about what they needed, he in the old folk’s home. Emphasis again told them “this is as much asylum as can fell on the group, and on issues of inat- be provided,” and got them to perform tention within that group, but individu- brief, charming ditties. But in the act’s als weren’t as defined as they had been in biggest scene, tables were turned and he Dust. The music took on a compelling answered their questions about dualities muscularity, with discrete instruments and oppositions (“Black and white?” traced over seething electronics: funky “The illusioned and the disillusioned?”), bass lines slithered, replete with thumb insisting that “the burden is always the pops and nudged by a chugging rhythm same,” then telling colorful jokes. When guitar; a singeing tone scraped as if off questioned about responsibility, the the lip of a glass. residents brought up the mysterious O, less a character than a characteristic that Ashley’s character declared himself part advocated for determination in the pur- of a witness protection program, estab- suit of happiness. O seemed to catalyze lishing a ground of shifting identity. La the residents, perhaps as No Legs was Barbara upped the ante, musing that central but absent in Dust. He, though, even something the size of an ocean had been faced with life traumas, where must be attached to something else for in Celestial Excursions the issue was the identification, adding that the something uncertainty of death. “is usually human.” The old man’s love letters (with no promises) consoled Another facet or lens added to the vision a lonely woman. “How precious you in the third act. The opera flexed between are,” he sang, a line the chorus took up Joan Jonas’s performances during the incongruously when Buckner, in the role musical interludes, which the singers of a thorny man having coffee with a turned to watch, and more focused arias woman (La Barbara), said he yearned for (two were exchanges between the singer the language that lovers use then spewed and the ensemble, and two were solos). a litany that got gruesome (“that sep- In the new version of the opera, Jonas’s ulcher, that cesspit, that carrion”). The participation was honed to the final ensemble kept repeating “priceless” and act, her presence a possible manifesta- “special” nevertheless, and the woman tion of O, standing in for the residents’

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 sense of resolution. (When Celestial those four big songs placed among five Excursions premiered in 2003, Jonas ensemble passages so that an aria fol- was on a broad riser throughout, with lowed an ensemble song. Ashley altered “Blue” Gene Tyranny at a grand piano, his methods while composing the piece, instructed by the composer to play “as especially his rigorous tempo dictates. if I’d never seen a piano before—no pat- The singers were liberated from earphone terns, no melodies—as if you’re trying click tracks, and he allowed them unusu- to impress this woman.”) Jonas’s poses ally broad latitude in choosing harmonic varied from the statuesque to quivering support from strands of orchestral mate- freeze-frames. She billowed the sheet rial accompanying their parts. In early as if it were a cloud, then perched it as performances, he and Tom Hamilton a drooping banner on her staff. On a had played those orchestral “beds,” stool before a camera, she worked with which were then fixed and recorded for a black marker on massive sketchpads, CD release. No longer behind his instru- watching the camera’s projection behind ments, able instead to watch subsequent her to complete rodent faces or infinity performances, Ashley found he was dis- symbols, and she broached a boundary of satisfied with the consecutive structure perception by sketching her nude torso of the movements. on paper pressed against her dress. As she moved and drew, profuse keyboard The material was drastically reordered runs vaulted like electrified Nancarrow for Made Out of Concrete. Parts were piano studies, recalling Tyranny’s inven- dropped and new parts written, result- tive work as Buddy the piano player in ing in what composer Ashley’s Perfect Lives. termed “the most rhetorically complex” of the three operas at La Mama. Ashley In Celestial Excursion’s last song, La performed two new songs, focused on Barbara offered a placid anecdote about a man unable to speak or write after a teaching at a college, leaving the opera stroke, whose thoughts about his friends open-ended in an extreme. One perfor- generated the expansive stories of the mance hit a false ending and left this arias. The elegantly dressed singers sat song out when a technical glitch discon- at rounded, interlocked tables draped in nected La Barbara from her headphone felt-green cloths, with extra-large playing cues. The performers remained poised, cards arrayed before them. (For each aria, the audience sat attentively, then Tom the singer took the libretto’s “hand” to Hamilton brought down the music and a spotlight before the tables.) Dimly lit, the applause began. It was a pregnant this eternal gambling den swirled with moment, exposing the cast’s telepathy eerie, insinuating soundscapes, creating and a feline agility in Ashley’s piece. an unsettling ambiguity. Could the opera be occurring in subterranean confines? Made Out of Concrete, Ashley’s most Or hurtling deep into space? Ashley sat recent opera, was literally “made out in profile near the backdrop, to the right of” Concrete, which had premiered at La of the tables. A chair and a tall ashtray MaMa in 2007. The composer had not stood in the backdrop’s central chasm. written himself into the original score, A shadowy figure came once to sit and in which each ensemble member had smoke there, which only heightened the an aria of about fifteen minutes, with dramatic ambiguity.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 After the ensemble opener and Hum- was piloting. This led him to reflect bert’s aria about a highly accomplished that, in future flights, “if anything goes woman in whom the narrator always wrong / I want to be in good hands,” sensed a secret, Ashley delivered his a sentiment that rang true a week after first song. In it, he described work that Captain Sullenberger glided Flight 1549 “the old man” and his pretty caretaker to safety on the Hudson River. Buckner’s did, reading through the dictionary and solo compounded in intensity then hit finding words to help him communicate. a charged endpoint when, having ten- Delivered without backing music, he dered himself to this friend’s coincidental was also revealing the building blocks care, he acknowledged that he probably of these operas, which were developed wouldn’t see him again. It felt less an from their rhythmic phrasing. His syl- issue of geography or coincidence than labification lilted or hardened, often in of fatality, embracing the possibility that the same word. The process of simul- either of them could perish first. One of taneously telling the backbone of the the startling aspects of the sound design story and taking the music back into came late in the opera, when detached, its core was astonishing, weaving in and indistinct vocal flecks appeared from out of intelligibility, as if he were telling speakers at the sides of the audience, everything and nothing. This is where which had some people glancing about the wonder of Ashley’s work lies for the (the house had responded similarly when listener: Unable to hang on every word, Concrete was premiered in 2007). That one accumulates details and construes a effect had been developed from the larger picture. Was Ashley discussing the initial aria, when Humbert’s voice was stroke victim’s importance to the opera? stretched to echo from those speakers. Or was he demonstrating a periphery of These sonic techniques confounded and that character’s physical debility? One of refreshed the piece, the most brash of the old man’s acquaintances took pity on myriad musical nuances that percolated his living “all trapped up like that,” and throughout La MaMa during each of wondered if the helpmate hadn’t made all Ashley’s operas. his stories up. She said no, they were in his head, adding that it is “the same kind The La MaMa productions were video- of thing that goes on in everybody.” taped according to Ashley’s meticulous shot plan, as he wants to get his work In La Barbara’s laconic tale, the academic back on TV, where he feels it functions to she played was caught in off-duty police greatest effect. Though it’s been decades shenanigans, drove home handcuffed, since Perfect Lives and Music Word Fire was exonerated in court after a pay-off, broke ground when first televised in the then caught the Super Bowl on TV. The early 1980s, he’s continued to refine the judge had declared “never mind what potency and scope of his operas on stage. really happened / we’re WAY beyond The recently produced pieces explored that,” one of numerous declarations that how people resort to imagination as age glinted from these operas like principles reduces their physical means. Dust’s city- of comprehension for the audience. park dwellers, though socially alienated, Buckner narrated decades of intermit- exalted their experiences and sustained an tent contact with a one-time friend, absent, immobile character through his including a flight on a jetliner that friend love of song. A group of elderly people

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 in Celestial Excursions, no longer able to latest libretto, Quicksand, a composer live independently, coped with looking once involved with the CIA travels to ahead by seeking joy in memory. And the an unnamed Southeast Asian nation in accomplishments and ever-secret moti- bad need of political overthrow. vations of long-term friends provided the stroke victim’s rich recollections in The second of the new songs Ashley Made Out of Concrete, helped along by sang in Made Out of Concrete referred to the attentions of a canny youngster. (The pyramids as perfectly running machines. three operas are available with libretto It is possible to appropriate that as an booklets from , with the internal comment on the operas. His latter recorded in its initial version, as character went on to declare about the Concrete.) Each of these works can be pyramid, in what seems an even more seen as advancing the previous piece’s precise hyper-commentary on the com- restricted circumstances, while sustain- poser’s work, that it was “designed to ing musical vitality and Ashley’s eager make you ask questions.” Ashley’s work bemusement. This is not to suggest he’s remains on a rife and flush quest. composing on a prescription: In his

ALAN LOCKWOOD lives and writes in Brooklyn. His pieces on music and on theater have appeared in New York Sun, Yale’s Theater magazine, MusicWorks and the Brooklyn Rail.

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