Robert Ashley

The story of Willard from Ashley's opera Atalanta, recounted in 3 parts.

This work is Woody's first entry into the narrative sphere, whereby the "story" is continually undermined with the aid of various anti-narrative strategies: In each of the eleven segments of this "electronic opera", different effects are used. Fascinated with the remarkable personality of infamous violinist Niccola Paganini and his complicated relationship to Hector Berlioz (played by artists Ernie Gusella and Robert Ashley, respectively), the author meditates over the intricacies of artistic geniality as connected not only with fame but also with the necessity of painful survival under the pressures of the art market.

Set in the American Midwest, Perfect Lives is “about” bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement, the changing of the light at sundown, et al. One of the definitive text-sound compositions of the late 20th century, it has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s".

Automatic Writing transforms involuntary speech into an ambient soundscape, conjuring four spectral musical "characters." Object Collection reimagines this on a stage of flickering monitors and shifting light, weaving a dense, ephemeral sound world—less a recreation, more an elusive, living mirage.

Video art show presented at the 1991 Broadcast Designers Association convention. Includes work from: Robert Ashley, Robert Breer, Peter Callas, Christen Clark, Sumit Das, Ed Emshwiller, John Hart, Jon Klein, Lyonel Kouro, Maureen Nappi, Paul Garin, Amy Greenfield, Nam June Paik, Mark Pellington, M. Rawlings, John Sanborn, Dan Sandin, William Wegman, Dean Winkler. Major contributions include "MAJORCA-fantasia", "Sunstone", "Welcome to My Living Room" and "Neo-Geo: An American Purchase", as well as excerpts from "Perfect Lives".

A new production of Robert Ashley's 1991 opera, "Improvement (Don Leaves Linda)," featuring Gelsey Bell, Amirtha Kidambi, Brian McCorkle, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder and Aliza Simons. Music Director: Tom Hamilton Live Sound and Processing: Tom Hamilton Stage Design and Lighting: David Moodey Producer: Mimi Johnson Presented at the Kitchen (New York), February 7 through 16, 2019. This video was recorded live by Iki Nakagawa (with Joseph Bacon and Al Foote III) on February 14, 2019. Audio recorded by Eric Sherman; remixed by Tom Hamilton.

Buried inside the epic American opera for television, “Perfect Lives” are the boogie-woogie lessons being sold by Buddy to untalented people in the middle of America. This pilot for the series is an abstraction that plays on the meaning of life (which is unknowable) and how to make art (impossible to teach) featuring the sublime mysteries of the traveling musician.

So getting up gets to be a problem for a sensitive person like him. The problem is to run that gauntlet again. Remove problem, remove gauntlet, remove run. Remove is to, remove the, remove that. Leave this, make this whatever.