Robert Ashley
Robert Ashley was first drawn to composition and acoustics in the field of music, propelled to seek the origins of unconscious, impromptu sound that would eventually make him a leading figure in electronic music and performance arts. He was a founding member of the ONCE Group—initiators of the ONCE Festival that hosted performance arts from 1961 to 1969 in Ann Arbor, Michigan—and the Sonic Arts Union, which also included Alvin Lucier and David Behrman.
Ashley is most revered for spearheading the genre of television operas. In the midst of generating soundtracks for films in the 1960s, he began crafting short operas, orchestral and choral compositions, and tapes for live performances. His pioneering televised opera, Music with Roots in the Aether (1976), was widely screened and led The Kitchen to commission Perfect Lives, televised in Europe and the United States in the early 1980s. Innovations in the way viewers might interact with performance and the time-frame of both opera and performance, which often clocked in at thirty minutes or less, were paramount to Ashley. His roster of vocalists was consistent, allowing narratives to interact over time. Ashley’s operas were often surreal in their dictation and use of voice. Visions and dream …
Robert Ashley was first drawn to composition and acoustics in the field of music, propelled to seek the origins of unconscious, impromptu sound that would eventually make him a leading figure in electronic music and performance arts. He was a founding member of the ONCE Group—initiators of the ONCE Festival that hosted performance arts from 1961 to 1969 in Ann Arbor, Michigan—and the Sonic Arts Union, which also included Alvin Lucier and David Behrman.
Ashley is most revered for spearheading the genre of television operas. In the midst of generating soundtracks for films in the 1960s, he began crafting short operas, orchestral and choral compositions, and tapes for live performances. His pioneering televised opera, Music with Roots in the Aether (1976), was widely screened and led The Kitchen to commission Perfect Lives, televised in Europe and the United States in the early 1980s. Innovations in the way viewers might interact with performance and the time-frame of both opera and performance, which often clocked in at thirty minutes or less, were paramount to Ashley. His roster of vocalists was consistent, allowing narratives to interact over time. Ashley’s operas were often surreal in their dictation and use of voice. Visions and dream sequences were spiritual, even fantastical, components that complimented storylines regularly addressing journeys and transitions. Now Eleanor’s Idea, a tetralogy produced between 1985 and 1994, was most indicative of this mature work.
Ashley was praised for utilizing “musical storytelling using the English language.” He created works for ensembles, choruses, orchestras, single and double performers on one or many instruments, dance companies including Merce Cunningham, “sound producing dances,” and “electronic music theaters” over the course of his career. His 1967 opera, That Morning Thing, was staged at the Performa Biennial in 2011, and a number of his operas were performed during the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He also premiered Crash, his final opera,at the Whitney. His work has appeared in the Venice Biennale, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal, and SITE Santa Fe, among others. In 2002 he was awarded the John Cage Award for Music.
