Robert Ashley - Private Parts

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Album Details: Private Parts

Release Date:: 11/15/1990
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From AMG Reviews

This CD reissues Lovely Music's debut release, originally issued on LP in 1977. Along with Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing, this is one of most engaging works he created in avant-garde opera. With simple accompaniment from "Blue" Gene Tyranny on keyboards and an elusive Kris playing subtle tabla, Asheley's voice is as penetrating and haunting as ever, delivering in the most expressive deadpan voice this side of the recorded William S. Burrows. As a cultural commentator, Ashley is equally as important as the late writer; in this economical opera he distills his unique approach to text and minimalist musical form, extending on the theme of his Perfect Lives television opera. Private Parts is simply one of the most poetic compositions of American minimalist art, and a vital document in the history of an artist whose mastery of aural-historic storytelling will leave the prepared listener speechless. A work only challenged in its exquisite realization by Ashley's other sublime work Automatic Writing. Listeners with interests from verbal/text-sound recording, minimalist composition and contemporary opera, owe it to yourselves to hear this masterwork.

- S.J. Harrison, All Music Guide

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Robert Ashley Biography

Studied with Ross Lee Finney, Roberto Gerhard, Leslie Bassett. Music degrees from Univ. of Michigan and Manhattan School of Music, worked in Speech Research Lab (psychoacoustics and cultural speech patterns) and was a Research Assistant in acoustics ...Full Robert Ashley Biography