Robert Ashley & Kenneth Goldsmith January 16, 2008

Robert Ashley is known for his work in new forms of opera and multi-disciplinary projects. He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1930 and was educated at the University of Michigan and the Manhattan School of Music. In the 1960s, Ashley organized Ann Arbor’s legendary ONCE Festival and directed the ONCE Group. During the 1970s, he directed the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, toured with the Sonic Arts Union, and produced and directed Music with Roots in the Aether, a 14-hour television opera/documentary about the work and ideas of seven American composers. Ashley wrote and produced Perfect Lives, an opera for television widely considered the precursor of “music-television.” Staged versions of Perfect Lives and Atalanta (Acts of God) and the monumental opera tetralogy, Now Eleanor’s Idea have toured throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. He wrote and directed Balseros for Florida Grand Opera, Dust for premiere at the Kanagawa Arts Foundation in Yokohama, and Celestial Excursions for the Berlin Festival and Hebbel Theater Berlin. His latest, Concrete, was seen at La Mama ETC in January 2007. Kenneth Goldsmith's writing has been called some of the most "exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry" by Publishers Weekly. Goldsmith is the author of nine books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb, and the editor of I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, which is the basis for an opera, Trans-Warhol, which premiered in Geneva in March of 2007. Goldsmith is also the host of a weekly radio show on New York City's WFMU. A documentary film about his work, sucking on words: Kenneth Goldsmith premiered at the British Library in London this past fall. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of PennSound.

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