A Robert Ashley Web Page
This is a web page devoted to musical examples from the works of Robert Ashley. It is meant to accompany Kyle Gann's book Robert Ashley in the American Composers series from University of Illinois Press (2012).
Chapter Two:
Chapter Five:
Partial transcription of "Blue" Gene Tyranny's improvisation in "The Backyard" from Perfect Lives
Chapter Six:
Chapter Seven:
Chapter Eight:
Much thanks to Robert Ashley and Lovely Music
for permission to use the examples.
All information © 2011 Kyle Gann. Please quote only with attribution.
Robert Ashley and Kyle Gann in Ashley's Tribeca apartment, August 2010
(photo by Mimi Johnson)
Reviews:
"Gann is a deep and subtle analyst... as Gann demonstrates over and over again, Ashley operas are not mere exercises in Eastern consciousness-emptying, but instead engage with an enormous wealth of ideas: 'In source material [the operas] range from Renaissance occultism to Hindu cosmology to the financial pages of the Wall Street Journal to boogie-woogie to country and western music to recent research on the evolution of the brain to cult fan magazines...' Gann's new book, without removing any of the essential mystery of the work, ably lays bare Ashley's immense achievement: the discovery of a new paradigm for opera - that of the epic within the minuscule - one 'attune[d] to our postmodern and polytextual age.'" - Devin King, Make Literary Magazine
"Gann's wonderfully written and informative book covers the motivations of Ashley, and concentrates on his innovative use of language in his series of works for voices and electronics... It's well worth a read as an introduction to the work of the composer who some of us consider the most important new voice in opera in the last third of the 20th century." Warren Burt, SoundBytes
"Gann makes a persuasive case that Ashley's genius resides in his acute perception of speech as music, and in his rare ability to draw American language into constellations that not only embody musical form but touch listeners in intimate and profound ways." - The Wire
"There is unlikely to be a better book that, confined by the limitations of mere words, can provide a comprehensive review of the many things Ashley has achieved. A real page-turner." - Examiner.com
Go to Kyle Gann's home page
