by Andrew Schulman
Sitting here Thinking about life in all its forms. It's one of those days so far where nothing fits.
So begins the voice of Robert Ashley musing over breakfast at the Holiday Inn Hotel, “where he lives, ordinarily.” Tap Dancing in the Sand is a one-off collaboration between the late avant-garde composer-librettist Robert Ashley and the now-defunct Dutch contemporary classical Ensemble MAE (formerly the Maarten Altena Ensemble, named after its founder, contrabassist Maarten Altena). Robert Ashley’s monologue began as a commission to “write five or six scenes where [Hector] Berlioz would make profound and oracular statements.” The text was written in 1979 for a film project by Woody Vasulka (The Commission), but the character Ashley wrote was Berlioz playing Alvin Lucier playing a character named Dr. Chicago from a series of motion pictures by George Manupelli. Ashley’s profound and oracular statements meander like the music itself, the instruments here written to imitate the stresses and rhythms of spoken English by the practice of ‘shadowing’ or ‘doubling’. Monolithic piano chords in a jazz idiom thus toll throughout in indeterminate rhythm, a female voice oohs along with the changes, while resonant tom-toms and a finicky muted horn provide texture. For a brief and beautiful second Ashley sings the word “fan-dan-go” in triple meter. In the end he thinks he understands something out of Plutarch about Metrodorus of Scepsis, at which point the monologue precipitously drops away. The horn, electric guitar, a violin, and a clarinet carry on in jittery dialogue meant to hearken back to the oracular style of the speech, thus demarcating Parts I and II of a 15-minute piece repurposing Ashley’s text from ’79.
Kyle Gann wrote in reference to Ashley’s television opera Perfect Lives, “No piece of music can be a truly great piece of music unless it gets under your skin, in a good way, and stays there.” Tap Dancing in the Sand has been under my skin for over a decade now, and I often recommend it as a sound place to start with Robert Ashley. It’s short relative to his full operas, it sounds marvelous (I venture to say you can put it on idly under almost any circumstance), and it introduces the casual listener to some quintessential trains of thought, not to mention Ashley’s characteristic wispy and playful vocal delivery (possibly the result of overemphasized enjambment). The remaining four tracks on the album are no less worthwhile. “Outcome Inevitable” provides another example of ‘shadowing’, in this case a viola doubling lines from various instruments. Like the title track, “Hidden Similarities” is a shorter piece, composed especially for Ensemble MAE from a draft of one of fours song from Ashley’s Concrete, though translated into Dutch. “in memoriam ESTEBAN GOMEZ” comes off as more or less a drone piece, at times lightly abrasive and atonal but never outright unpleasant. Ashley wrote it in 1963 as the first of four pieces, each corresponding to a European ensemble arrangement. “in memoriam” was written for quartet, and its subject is the Portuguese explorer and cartographer dispatched by Ferdinand Magellan to scout a route around South America. The album closes with a version of Robert Ashley’s mantric “She Was A Visitor” more soft-spoken and full-bodied than the earlier Automatic Writing recording. The production throughout Tap Dancing in the Sand is lush but not distracting; it only adds to the overall quality. One wishes the collaboration had had a second go. This album ought to be better known by Ashley enthusiasts.
Tap Dancing in the Sand can still be purchased on CD over at Unsounds.