Robert Ashley: “The music has outgrown the architecture.”
On Oct. 23, Issue Project Room held a screening of Robert Ashley’s 1983 classic made-for-TV-opera “Perfect Lives,” in support of our ongoing fundraising campaign for “Vidas Perfectas,” to be held December 15 – 17 at Irondale Theater in Brooklyn.
After the screening, Robert Ashley, Alex Waterman and Ned Sublette (who will play the narrator, “R,” in “Vidas Perfectas”) stuck around for a Q&A about television, “Vidas Perfectas,” and methods of collaboration. The whole interview is available for streaming below, but here’s an excerpt, just to whet your appetite
(Listen while reading)
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Why is it for television? As I was growing into music, I was more and more disappointed by the musical experience that I saw on stage. One, because it was so old—the instruments are old, the ideas are so old, everything’s so old it’s so boring, you know? Because the music that we’re all thinking of had outgrown the architecture. In the best of circumstances, the architecture and the music—for the people—match. But what’s happened in the last 50–100 years is that the music has outgrown the architecture. There is no architecture to deal with what we’re talking about right here [bong] … and I thought, there’s got to be one, or we wouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. And it occurred to me … that our architecture might be the imaginary space behind the surface of the television screen. In other words, you look at the television screen, you see whatever you see—red, green, blue—behind that there’s an imaginary space and maybe that’s the place for the music of our time. So I started thinking in that way and I haven’t changed my mind a bit. I think Alex is the first to see … if you want your music to feel at home, I would suggest you start knocking on the doors of television and saying “let me in.” Because that’s the space for my music. It has everything in terms of the speed of the music, it can handle any situation, and it can go from not much money to a whole lot of money—and you want to be on both ends [bong].
—Robert Ashley
Full Excerpt:
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Vidas Perfectas
VIDAS PERFECTAS is an all new, Spanish language version of the classic avant-garde television opera from the 1980s: PERFECT LIVES.
Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives challenges the ways in which we perceive the relationship between language and music, mixing chanting, storytelling, meditation and ecstatic revelation. And as the world’s first ‘television opera,’ has almost single-handedly changed the way we think about opera, television, and performance.
In 2010, Issue Project Room was awarded an NEA grant to produce a new version of Perfect Lives in co-operation with Robert Ashley and Alex Waterman. The NEA grant provided the funds necessary to begin, but it constitutes only a fraction of the cost of a live performance run and an even smaller fraction of the cost of the television production.
Vidas Perfectas will be produced for television and appear in seven 30-minute episodes. We are now seeking partners throughout the country to co-produce the remaining episodes in the series. The newly completed installments will premiere at the hosting institution, joined by all episodes completed at the time of staging. This cumulative way of working allows us to spread the fund-raising and labour of creating a 3 hour opera, over a longer period of time. We can get deeper into the music and create shorter, more realistic goals along the way.
At the finish of all seven episodes, we intend to tour the full production (specifically in the U.S., Spain and Latin America), and to mount a complete television version on Spanish- and English language television. Furthermore, we plan to publish the resulting production as a CD and DVD.
Lethem, Auster and Borough President Markowitz support ISSUE Project Room and Brooklyn Culture
paul auster reading at "grocery"
On Saturday, Feb 7, Authors and ISSUE Project Room Art Advisory Board Members Jonathan Lethem and Paul Auster, provided a rare treat for St. Ann’s parents: intimate readings from “The Collector” and “Brooklyn Follies” at Grocery on Smith Street. Marty Markowitz said a few words at the start of the event and we couldn’t have been more pleased to have him join us.
alex waterman performing at 110 Livingston
The lunch was followed by the first public tour of ISSUE’s future home at 110 Livingston with a special performance by Alex Waterman and talk on the unique acoustic characteristics of the room by Raj Patel of one of the world’s leading engineering firms, ARUP.
Interested in seeing the new space? Contact us, we’d love to share it with you!
A WEEK OF STRINGS III
February 22, 2008
Alex Waterman, Kenta Nagai + todd reynolds, Satoshi Takeishi, Luke Dubois
Alex Waterman
Alex Waterman is a founding member of the Plus Minus Ensemble, based in Brussels and London, specializing in avant-garde and experimental music. Alex has worked with musicians such as Richard Barrett, Keith Rowe, Marina Rosenfeld, Anthony Coleman, Ned Rothenberg, Chris Mann, Alison Knowles, Thomas Meadowcroft, and Michael Finnissy. Alex performs with Either/Or Ensemble in New York, and has performed as guest musician with numerous ensembles, including Trio Event (Berlin), Champs d’Action-Antwerp, Q-O2-Brussels, and Black Jackets Company-Brussels. As a curator he has organized events at Les Bains:Connective in Brussels, OT301 in Amsterdam, Miguel Abreu Gallery and The Kitchen. His project with the Bach Cello Suites has toured in Switzerland, Italy, Holland, and the Opera of Monaco. In 2007 Alex curated two exhibitions in New York, one on experimental music and poetics: Agap_ (June 2-July 28th, 2007) at Miguel Abreu Gallery; and the other on graphic notation, Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music (September 7-October 20, 2007) at The Kitchen in Chelsea. Alex is presently working on his PhD in musicology at NYU as well as writing a book about the composer Robert Ashley with the designer and writer Will Holder. Alex’s writings have been featured in FoArm Magazine, Dot Dot Dot, and Artforum. ( www.alexwaterman.com )
Kenta Nagai
Kenta Nagai is a sound and visual artist based in New York City. He works with acoustic and electronic sound, visual media and live performance. After completing undergraduate studies at Berklee College of Music in Boston (BA, 1996) Nagai moved to New York City. He began his NY career as a fretless guitarist playing on the streets, in subway stations and at clubs. His most recent compositional work, entitled Long, Long, Long, is an ensemble piece for traditional Asian instruments. It was presented at Roulette, in NYC, in October 2006. Nagai’s fretless guitar playing is featured on Eugene Chadborne’s album “Guitar Festival Summer 1999″ with Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo and Jim O’Rourke plus Joe Morris, Lauren Mazzacane Connors, David Watson and others. Nagai is also a featured performer on two recordings by the composer Laura Andel, “Somnambulist” (Red Toucan Records, May 2003, RT9322) and “In::tension:” (Rossbin Records, October 2005, RS022). As a performer on the shamisen, a traditional Japanese string instrument, Nagai has appeared in numerous concerts at venues including Sculpture Center in Long Island City and Carnegie Hall. From 1999 until 2002 Nagai was a composer in residence at The Cave Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In addition to his work as a guitarist, Nagai is also involved in creating multi-media, interactive performance and installation and has collaborated with artists from various fields. These projects include a long-standing collaborative relationship with choreographer Boaz Barkan documented by filmmaker Miana Grafals in the short film “A Moving Portrait” that features the movement and sound of Barkan and Nagai. “A Moving Portrait” was presented at Dance Theatre Workshop in NYC as part of the 2005 Dance on Camera Festival. More recently, Nagai worked with the photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto on the silent film “The Water Magician” (1933, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi) composing film score and performed at Japan Society, NYC and Hershhorn Museum at Smithsonian Institute. In 2005 and 2006, Nagai performed in “Flight of Mind ” with choreographer Jennifer Monson. He continues his collaboration with Monson in 2007 through a multi-season project set in the Highland Park Reservoir in NYC.
Todd Reynolds is a long-time member of the Steve Reich Ensemble and Bang on a Can, a member of The Silk Road Project and a founding member of the string quartet known as ETHEL. A veteran of both New York and international performing arts scenes, his rock club and concert hall performances are a hybrid of acoustica and electronica, employing technology as an essential and driving element in a compositional style rooted in improvisation. The past two years since his departure from the string quartet world have seen a rise in educational focus, with six week-long residencies nationally, and two tours opening for and playing with indie-sensations, The Books. With a CD due on the Innova label later this year, he is sequestered in his studio when he’s not on tour teaching or playing. Season highlights include tours of The Zippo Songs and Meredith Monk’s Songs of Ascension, week-long performance/teaching residencies in Colorado and Indiana, Meet The Composer’s Soloist Champions project, and performances as soloist with The Albany Symphony and Theo Bleckmann.
Satoshi Takeishi, drummer, percussionist, and arranger is a native of Mito Japan. He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. While at Berklee he developed an interest in the music of South America and went to live in Colombia following the invitation of a friend. He spent four years there and forged many musical and personal relationships. One of the projects he worked on while in Colombia was “Macumbia” with composer/arranger Francisco Zumaque in which traditional, jazz and classical music were combined. With this group he performed with the Bogota symphony orchestra to do a series of concerts honoring the music of the most popular composer in Colombia, Lucho Bermudes. In 1986 he returned to the U.S. in Miami where he began work as an arranger. In 1987 he produced “Morning Ride” for jazz flutist Nestor Torres on Polygram Records. His interest expanded to the rhythms and melodies of the middle east where he studied and performed with Armenian-American oud master Joe Zeytoonian. Since moving to New York in 1991 he has performed and recorded with many musicians such as Ray Barretto, Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Eliane Elias, Marc Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Randy Brecker, Dave Liebman, Anthony Braxton, Mark Murphy, Herbie Mann, Paul Winter Consort, Rabih Abu Khalil, Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band, Erik Friedlander and Pablo Ziegler to name a few. He continues to explore multi-cultural, electronics and improvisational music with local musicians and composers in New York.
R. Luke DuBois is a composer, performer, video artist, and programmer living in New York City. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and teaches interactive sound and video performance at Columbia’s Computer Music Center and at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production work with many artists and organizations including Toni Dove, Matthew Ritchie, Todd Reynolds, Michael Joaquin Grey, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Bang on a Can, Engine27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR, and is the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. He is a co-author of Jitter, a software suite developed by Cycling’74 for real-time manipulation of matrix data. His music (with or without his band, the Freight Elevator Quartet), is available on Caipirinha/Sire, Cycling’74, and Cantaloupe music, and his artwork is represented by bitforms gallery in New York City.
8pm $10
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ISSUE is starting off the New Year with a change of scenery. That's right, Issue Project Room is moving out of our space at the Old American Can Factory and into 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. We've had a great run at the Can Factory,...