THE WIRE WWW.THEWIRE.CO.UK ISSUE 234 AUGUST 2003 Robert Ashley Meet the electronic pioneer who took opera into the multimedia age. By Thom Holmes Built for Speed Textually hyperdense and accellerated for the televisual age, the multimedia music theatre of composer Robert Ashley has been called the future of opera, as well as the first to exploit the unique rhythms of the American voice. Following this year’s premiere of his new work Celestial Excursions, Thom Holmes meets the composer to discuss his founding role in the Sonic Arts Union, his love of TV, and his celebration of life on the margins. Photos: Chris Buck other for their living space. Today, the windows are open due to the warm weather. Ashley’s computers, keyboards and recording equipment are clustered in the centre of the space underneath a marquee-like canopy. The tent is there to protect the equipment from falling crumbs of concrete and ceiling plaster while the roof undergoes repairs. Despite the disruption, Ashley never loses his train of thought.’“That’s why so much popular music has to do with love,” he continues. “It puts a label on it and when it’s good, that label really works. It can’t do anything but that, no matter how hard people try. No matter how hard Bob Dylan tried or John Lennon tried, you can’t make popular music into anything except a labelling of your own experience that you never realised needed a label.” He sits up straight and places the palms of his hands firmly on the table in front of him. “Opera doesn’t do that. Opera is supposed to present you with characters in the same way that a great novel presents you with characters. In that sense, it becomes amoral. You’re supposed to be able to see it because it’s brought to you. That’s totally different than labelling an experience. You have to continually refer back to what human beings know. My job is to establish those characters.” We have just crossed the line where popular music ends and opera begins. “Popular music always “ends after accelerating clip. He is always Welcome to Robert Ashley’s territory. three minutes,” remarks Robert composing and touring, completing a Ashley without a hint of judgment in new opera about every three years Ashley often talks about history, his voice. In his TriBeCa studio in and following it with select perhaps because he had such a hand downtown New York, we’re talking performances that might take him in forging it. He and his about the operas he’s been writing across the United States and over to contemporaries were initially linked to since the mid-70s, which leads to a Europe and Japan. He edits his John Cage and David Tudor through a discussion of popular song. He conversation with great care, as if variety of encounters and pauses, forging his next sentence. determined to verbalise the best take collaborations in the 1960s, and then “Popular music, when it works, of each thought. He and partner Mimi went on to become the most reminds us of something we already Johnson live in an old brick warehouse consistent practitioners of American know, or it reminds us of something that was converted into residential experimental music into the 70s. This we’ve already experienced. It turns lofts back in the 70s. She runs Lovely ‘post-Cage generation’ — Ashley, back the hands of time to something Music, the record label devoted to Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier and that we know from experience. It puts documenting key works of the David Behrman — acquired their initial a label on that thing.” American electronic and momentum through their founding of Even at 72 years old, Ashley exists electroacoustic avant garde. The two The Sonic Arts Union (1966-76), a in defiance of history, and he are longtime residents, occupying two mutually supportive thinktank for live continues to move ahead at an floors — one for their studio and the experimental music. If Cage and Tudor represented the first wave of live drone of his voice. The repeated line Though he had stopped composing, electronic music production — the use “She was a visitor” cascades gently, Ashley didn’t remove himself entirely of magnetic tape and the amplification sleepily, into a chanted murmur, as an from the world of New Music. The of small sounds — then Ashley, accompanying chorus freely repeats Sonic Arts Union gave him a way to Mumma, Lucier and Behrman in their given phonemes from the sentence. perform without having to actually different ways represented four Ashley likened it to the process of compose. He also took the job of extensions of that abstraction, each rumour mongering, where the content Director of the Center for indicating musical practices that are of the original message becomes Contemporary Music at Oakland’s still being explored and utilised today. distorted and transformed with Mills College in 1969, revitalising one Ashley’s contribution consisted of repetition. of the most influential music his attempts to seamlessly integrate programmes in the country after electronic performance with human But one morning in April 1968, he several of its founding members — performance. One of the earliest and decided to stop composing altogether. most notably Morton Subotnick and most notorious examples was The Fully intending the decision to be final, Pauline Oliveros — had left to pursue Wolfman (1964), where he played his his reasons were many, such as the other opportunities. Ultimately, it was own vocals through loudspeakers economic pressures of trying to Mimi Johnson who challenged Ashley simultaneously with a tape produce concerts while eking out a to return to composing, saying, “Well, composition and controlled the living with day jobs. With little money if you are a famous composer, you’ve feedback by putting his mouth up available for composers, he began to got to compose music.” against the mic. The avalanche of believe that “there was no reality” to But where to begin? During his noise was “so overpowering to the his dreams. He had also been deeply sabbatical, technology and the arts listener that no one ever understands discouraged by one of the last had evolved significantly. By the early how the sound is made”. performances of the touring ONCE 70s, video production equipment was The Wolfman was emblematic of Group, when the audience physically affordable for independent artists, the performance pieces Ashley tested assaulted the musicians. and experimental electronic music during his years of work in Ann Arbor, “The performance we did at flourished with the accessibility of Michigan, particularly with Gordon Brandeis [1968] was a beautiful piece synthesizers, integrated circuits, and Mumma for Milton Cohen’s Space called Night Train,” Ashley recalls.”“It other by-products of the burgeoning Theater (1957-64), and with Mumma involved, among a lot of other things, computer industry. “I had been and others for the ONCE Festivals giving the audience something when working for years on an idea of an (1961 and 1965). Ashley was they came in. The idea of the piece opera whose characters were all my constantly experimenting with was that we were aliens trying to composer friends,” says Ashley, “and combinations of available technology make friends with the Earth people. they would be represented in the and live performers. His 60s portfolio So, everybody who came in along with opera by their music and by their is a melange of performance their ticket got something edible, like conversation. I tried to make it work in approaches, including purely an apple or an onion or a fish or a loaf about five different ways. Finally, when electronic works for tape such as Big of bread or something like that. I figured out that I could do it on Danger In Five Parts (1964) and Somehow in the middle of the videotape it just came together very Untitled Mixes (1965), and performance the audience kind of lost quickly.” soundtracks for the experimental films it and started attacking us. They were This work became Ashley’s first of George Manupelli. throwing things... Besides the hard extended ‘opera’ for television, Music The ONCE Festival became a pieces of vegetable, like an onion, we With Roots In The Aether (1976). remarkable laboratory for New Music were passing out lights. [Architecture Aether is a 14 hour TV opera/ and mixed media before Ashley and professor] Harold Borkin had a group documentary featuring the work and Mumma wound it down in 1966 in Ann of ten or so students there who were ideas of seven American composers: Arbor to concentrate on other outlets soldering one end of a flashlight bulb David Behrman, Philip Glass, Alvin and contexts for their music. While to one end of a battery and then Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Pauline Mumma went to work with Tudor, Cage soldering a wire to the other end of Oliveros, Terry Riley and Ashley and the Merce Cunningham Dance the battery. When the audience himself. More portraiture than Company (see The Wire 216), Ashley started throwing those, I knew we conventional operatic narrative, these extended his forays into electronic were in deep trouble. We got through video profiles lovingly showed the music theatre into works he called the performance but it was very ugly. artists in action rather than operas for voices, dancers and tape. It was very discouraging. I had had attempting to explain their work. After Drawn from his own That Morning enough. I didn’t compose music for premiering at the Festival d’Automne à Thing (1967), She Was A Visitor another five years.” Paris in 1976, Aether has been shown (1967), for speaker and chorus, was in different countries on TV or as an an early work featuring the soothing installation.