Robert Ashley - Yellow Man With Heart With Wings (1990)

"A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and other electronic figures which flutter in and out of the mix. The text, "Ideas from The Church," will later show up in the 1994 opera, Foreign Experiences. It is included in the liner notes. In part two, the four-note synthesizer line returns, this time backing an ethereal, sustained chord, and the vocals sound "like a distant rendering of the earth's electromagnetic halo."
1990 CD issue of this 1978 piece for voice and electronics. The electronics (with additional Clavinet by "Blue" Gene Tyranny) start out shimmering and subtle, slowing building up in strange, menacing fashion. The first part is in Spanish (with Guillermo Grenier providing the voice); the second part is "in English" (heavily processed vocals by Ashley) and quite radical -- easy to imagine this one sitting very high in a United Dairies-like universe."
~ in Forced Exposure

"An inspired prose-poem in Spanish and English about agriculture, and other perspectives and feelings that occur to people in cities, and to those who live outside cities. Heart-lifting."
~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide

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Robert Ashley 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 at the Architectural Research Lab. Co-founder legendary ONCE Group in the 1960s, co-director Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in 1970s. Created new kind of opera (sometimes called the New Narrative opera) in works like That Morning Thing (1967), Combination Wedding and Funeral (1964), Perfect Lives an opera-for-TV (1980), e/L Aficionado (1991). Social behavior and and language illusion studies like The 4th of July for tape (1960), The Wolfman (1964), in memoriam ... Crazy Horse (symphony) (1963), The Trial of Anne Opie Wehrer and Unknown Accomplices for Crimes Against Humanity (1968).
+ info on Ashley HERE

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Robert Ashley : English voice and all instruments; except "Blue" Gene Tyranny, clavinet; Spanish voice : Guillermo Grenier

Track 1 : Spanish version running time: 26' 51''
Track 2 : English version running time: 26' 39''

Originally composed by Robert Ashley in 1978 (Visibility Music Publishers)

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