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- Path: sparky!uunet!dtix!darwin.sura.net!ms!mad
- From: mad@cs.wm.edu (Michael A. Dritschel)
- Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
- Subject: Re: FYI: Lovely Music....
- Message-ID: <1992Dec29.213243.11080@cs.wm.edu>
- Date: 29 Dec 92 21:32:43 GMT
- References: <b-grant-281292124649@mac51.ed.nwu.edu> <BzznBB.Knt@news.cso.uiuc.edu> <b-grant-291292141359@mac51.ed.nwu.edu>
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- Organization: College of William & Mary, founded 1693
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- In-Reply-To: b-grant@nwu.edu's message of Tue, 29 Dec 1992 20:07:32 GMT
- Nntp-Posting-Host: ms.cs.wm.edu
-
- Barry Grant writes:
-
- In response to Edgar Erwin's questions about my post on Improvement:
-
- There is a complete recording of Perfect Lives, 3 CD set from Lovely. The 1
- CD recording with Tyranny and Ashley is called, I think, Private Lives. The
- complete opera also has Tyranny with a couple of "singers" joining Ashley.
- I think Tyranny plays all the music--piano and synthesized sounds.
-
- The single recording is called _Perfect Lives (Private Parts)_. When
- I got it it was only available on LP, with the complete opera
- available on cassette. I'm glad to hear it is out on CD. There
- are a few other older recordings featuring music of Robert Ashley that
- I am aware of. One is a piece called _Purposeful Lady, Slow
- Afternoon_ that I believe came out on Everest and is supposedly part
- of a longer work called _The Wolfman Motor City Review_. I am not
- aware of any recordings of this. There was also an album which came
- out on the unfortunately now defunct 1750 Arch Records label called
- something like _10 + 2: Spoken Word Music_ that has an excerpt of a
- piece by Ashley called _In Sarah, Menken, and Christ There Were Men
- and Women_. By the way, the "+2" in the title refers to two pieces in
- the wind-off grooves of the album---a possibility presumably lost with
- CD technology.
-
- I should mention that _Perfect Lives_ was performed live at the New Music
- America festival when it was held in Chicago in 1980(?). It was broken
- into several parts that were performed on successive nights after the
- main concerts were over in a river boat docked to Navy Pier (which is
- where the festival took place). The visuals consisted of Robert
- Ashley standing before a microphone in front of a bank of television
- screens with a lot of wonderful video work.
-
- It would be interesting to hear of others impressions of the New Music
- America festivals. I have only been able to attend the one in Chicago
- and then one several years later in Washington, D.C. I must say that
- I found the former to be much better for several reasons. Primarily
- though, it was because of the impression that for the latter they
- programmed composers and performers that were "in" at the expense off
- lesser known but often equally interesting music. I didn't really
- hear anyone that I didn't know about before, and while I was happy to
- be able to hear such things as the Inuit Throat singers and the Dirty
- Dozen Brass Band live, it just didn't seem like the right venue. Also
- the fact that it was carried live on WFMT was a plus for the nights
- when I couldn't get down there. Unfortunately I have not lived close
- enough to attend any others and it has been a number of years since
- these two took place, so maybe things have changed.
- --
- Michael A. Dritschel mad@cs.wm.edu
-
- Department of Mathematics
- The College of William and Mary
-