Robert Ashley World War Three (Just The Highlights) (2010)
Robert Ashley Tap Dancing in the Sand (2004)
Robert Ashley Public Opinion Descends Upon the Demonstrators (1962) (European premiere)
Songs by Travis Just, Jennifer Walshe and Christopher Fox
Toshi Ichiyanagi Sapporo (1962)
Screening of 'The Bank' from Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives (1978-83)
Performers:
Apartment House (Ashley/Ichiyanagi):
Philip Thomas (piano), Kerry Yong (keyboard), Simon Limbrick (percussion), Gavin Morrison (bass flute), Emma Williams (bass flute), Heather Roche (bass clarinet), Bridget Carey (viola), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello)
Sam Ashley voice
Elaine Mitchener voice
Patricia Auchterlonie voice
Leo Chadburn (Ashley, Just, Walshe, Fox) voice
Jamie Hamilton (Ashley's Public Opinion)
Tonight we celebrate one of the greatest American experimentalists, Robert Ashley – his diverse output, his commissions as co-founder of the pioneering ONCE Festival and his influence on subsequent generations.
At the core of the night are four works by Ashley, explorations of soapy new-world metaphysics and the outer reaches of the Gesamtkunstwerk. We begin with one of his earliest, most radical and rarely heard works, Public Opinion Descends Upon the Demonstrators. Described by Ashley as 'electronic music theater', the piece caused a riot at its premiere at the ONCE Festival. Here, it is presented by composer Jamie Hamilton.
Alongside it, his composer-performer son, Sam Ashley, will perform two more recent works by his father: one of his final compositions, the ominously titled World War Three (Just The Highlights) and, with Apartment House, the breezy, attractive Tap Dancing in the Sand.
Before a rare screening of an excerpt from his masterpiece Perfect Lives, we present one the radical works that exemplifies the kind of repertoire that Ashley's ground-breaking ONCE Festival was bringing to the American Midwest in the 1960s, Toshi Ichiyanagi's Sapporo.
Meanwhile, composer/vocalist Leo Chadburn presents some recent work by Travis Just, Jennifer Walshe and Christopher Fox that shows how influential Ashley's style, methods, preoccupations, have been on a younger generation and where it has led them.
To end, we offer a rare screening of 'The Bank', a key chapter from Robert Ashley's most celebrated operas, the influential, garrulous, super-saturated shaggy-dog tale Perfect Lives, a series of 'songs about the Corn Belt, and some of the people in them', originally made for Channel 4.