From mal3@mal.net Wed Jan 26 15:14:50 2005
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 06:38:49 -0500
From: Mal Humes <mal3@mal.net>
To: jim@jimdavies.org
Subject: re:Robert Ashley is a very obvious influence on LA.

While it's not mentioned much, Laurie Anderson went to undergrad college
at Mills College in Oakland California, 1965-66 , which became the home
of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (where Oliveras, Subotnick, Ramon
Sender, & Terry Riley did early tape works) archives right
around 1966-67-  see
            http://o-art.org/history/50s&_60s/TapeCenter/SFTMC.html and
            http://o-art.org/history/50s&_60s/TapeCenter/  from some
interesting details on the SFTMC and associated folks. It's sort of
amusing to see Laurie left the San Francisco Bay area just as the Summer
of Love and the sixties eploded into psychedlia there. She finished up
college in NY and Mills isn't even mentioned on most of the bios that
list her college degrees.
 
Morton Subotnick was on faculty at Mills at that time and was probably
working on his classic Silver Apples of The Moon (1967) in 1966. Don
Buchla was engineer of the studio from 1965-67 and a pioneer in early
analog systhesis. Looks like the SFTMC completed it's move there in 1967
after Laurie was gone, but with Subotnick on faculty through 1966 it's
extremely likely Anderson was exposed to the early tape and synth
experiments of Subotnick and the SFTMC before she moved back to NY. It's
still a very small residential college where any of the students would
have frequent contact with faculty and where music and theater and dance
departments collaborate on works. The SFTMC evolved to the CCM and the
grad department of music there has seen folks like John Cage, Darius
Milhaud, Terry Riley, Fred Frith, Anthony Braxton, Lou Harrison (who died
this month) and a virtual who's who of 20th century avant-garde
contemporary music names associated as students or faculty. (see
www.mills.edu)
 
Robert Ashley joined Mills in 1969. From 1966 to 1976 he toured
throughout the United States and Europe with the Sonic Arts Union, the
composers' collective that included David Behrman, Alvin Lucier and
Gordon Mumma. I've always thought it was likely that Robert Ashley had a
direct influence on her and that Laurie knew him as his style of
storytelling works and epics seems to be similar to Anderson's work and
they moved through similar musical circles in what were at the time
fairly small worlds for creative folks. I don't know the exact dates of
her time at Mills but have been told there are works by her in the
library archives by friends who went there, and I'm not sure it
overlapped with the time Ashley was there but think it's very likely, and
Ashley was later very active in the NY avant music scene at the same time
Anderson's early works were being released on compilations circa 1977-80.
David Van Tieghem collaborated on some of Anderson's early works after
working with Ashley.
 
"In 1978, the Kitchen in New York City commissioned Ashley's PERFECT
LIVES, an opera for television in seven half-hour episodes. "In the scope
of its ambition and the sheer scale of its production, PERFECT LIVES is a
milestone both in video and in music, a brilliant collaboration among a
host of important artists,"wrote Charles Hagen in Art-forum. "Ashley's
text, alternately lyrical and farcical, trite and obscure, mystical and
vernacular, combines with his deadpan singsong delivery, Blue Gene
Tyranny's elegant bar-piano improvisations, Peter Gordon's
syntho-rhythms, and Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem's performances to
produce a hypnotic, deeply affecting experience."
(http://www3.uakron.edu/ssma/composers/Ashley.shtml)
 
 - Malcolm Humes