Robert Ashley

As a pioneer in American experimental music,composer Robert Ashley is a direct descendant of the Charles Ives/Henry Cowell/John Cage tradition. Sometimes controversial, his large-scale collaborative performance works have pointed the way to new uses of language in a musical setting. Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1930 and educated at the University of Michigan and the Manhattan School of Music.
Ashley believes strongly in the collaborative process. Rejecting the conventional concept of aesthetic hierarchies, he maintains that "the idea is old fashioned and suggests accompaniment....Technique of profound collaboration is essential." In his collaborations, Ashley seeks to "use the full imagination of the artists in an arrangement that has a single goal--a single authorship--producing a work that is a composite of imaginations" he says.
Ashley has found television to be the artistic medium best suited to large-scale collaboration. "the possibility of a profound level of collaboration among a large group of individual artists without the umbrella of an institutional organization is crucial to what is happening in the performing arts in the United States today," says Ashley.