Paul and I met at Flor de Broadway on 138 and Broadway. It was a beautiful early spring afternoon.

—

PP

This isn’t going on the radio right? Because I may have just cursed on the radio. I just forgot. No one really warned me… They’ll just bleep it out. They were so worried.

GP

No. Do you want to see a menu? I found a video of a Varispeed thing, and I recognized you as Pip from Dave Malloy’s thing at Joe’s Pub. That’s still in development?

PP

We just did a workshop two weeks ago. It’s going to be huge, a 14 hour event. What you saw was essentially one section, and that’ll be bookended by a meal, and break, and then another section, like an installation, and then another section. Pip is a jazz cycle section, but in the whole piece there’s a musical, a vaudevillian section, lots of pieces.

GP

So, the project is Moby Dick, not just Pip?

PP

Yeah.

GP

Good christ, he doesn’t stop. What are you going to order?

PP

I think I’m going to get the stewed chicken.

GP

You blew me out of the water as Pip. I’m really excited to see you in the Robert Ashley piece on Friday.

PP

Thank you. I feel so, so passionate about this work. It’s one of the best things I’ve been a part of.

GP

How is his work notated?

PP

Not everything is notated. Some things are. What’s consistent across his pieces is notating rhythms and timing. The sentence should take this many beats. Timing and rhythm is very important in Ashley’s stuff. In terms of pitch material, we learn it through the performance practice of what he’s done. His recordings are really what we associate him with, so we use those as scores. It’s got him on them, and a group of singers he works with very closely, so we take that as a guide for what’s appropriate and what’s not. And, of course, we infuse our own stuff. When Varispeed did Perfect Lives, we started off in 2011 working on another project. The year prior, Dave Ruder and Aliza Simons got a book of Perfect Lives, and had been influenced by Bob Ashley for a while. They went around to different places and just read the book. And then, we said, oh well we’re super into Bob Ashley too. Want to do it again this year? And they said sure. We thought, maybe we could bring some portable instruments and also read along with it. And so, what started was a portable ad-hoc super improvised reading. Nothing was really planned. And, who showed up at the first reading, but Bob Ashley and Mimi Johnson. They were there, 11am, at a little park in Greenpoint. He wanders in, a little smiling face, so excited about it. And he follows us all thirteen hours of the day, from episode to episode. Chatting, learning about him, having meals, reading, having coffee. There was a point when I was reading The Supermarket, basically sight-reading, I couldn’t remember any words from that. I’m going through it, he’s walking right beside me. And he corrected me on the way I should articulate something. I thought, yes, this is right. Everything about this moment is great. We’re walking through the supermarket aisles, a group of bandits kind of talking/singing/doing weird shit in Brooklyn. It’s all weird shit in Brooklyn. So we got to know him, little by little. And little by little, the piece developed. Then we thought okay we could get instrumentalists. And we can score stuff out. And taking his notes, and notes from “Blue” Gene Tyranny, his pianist, about what the harmonic structure is, what the beat structure is, we started really planning the piece out. It’s our own arrangements, we feel really proud about that. But the structure is all Bob’s.

GP

As a performer, how do you deal with improvising in this regard? I guess the easy answer is acting in a metered way?

PP

I don’t think it acting, it’s singing. The same way that folk songs aren’t notated, bel canto arias aren’t notated. It’s a different way of notating, and it’s passed around like a folk tradition. You learn the people who do it before you, try to imitate them, put your own spin on it. It has nothing to do with acting, it has to do with folk music.

GP

People say he’s the first American operettist.

PP

He makes great shit.

GP

My first introduction to him was turning on the radio, hearing a tabla. This was WKCR. I figured it was a raga show. And then this crazy Wurlitzer pops up, and then a voice starts in, “Let’s just say that contradictions are behind her. And in the backyard, God. TThis set of circumstances that is indescribable by our geometry.”

PP

“He takes himself seriously. Motels rooms have lost his punch for him.” You could equate it closer to spoken word. It is and it isn’t. It comes from a different world. It comes from, how does this sound interact with accompaniment behind us. It comes from song. Never losing sight of that is how it keeps it interesting.

GP

Crash is all voices?

PP

Only voices. And the voices are the accompaniment.

GP

Has Ashley worked on Crash with you guys?

PP

The beautiful thing is he wrote it for us. We saw the libretto, and we knew it wasn’t written for his usual group. He was very honest. He thought he was getting old, too old to perform. He was feeling old. There was a limit to what he could do, he thought. So he made this book for us, and our names were in the book, the same way that Joan La Barbara‘s name was, and Tom Bruckner’s, and Jacqueline Humbert. It was heartwrenchingly beautiful to see that. That’s my name! Now, the way I do it will hopefully influence how somebody does it in the future. Hopefully it’s going to become repertoire. It’s not just for us, and it’s not just for Bob. The generations will play this song over and over again, and they’ll do it better and in different ways. He worked with us a little bit on it, but he wasn’t present at the rehearsals. He was very sick at the time. Mimi Johnson really is the driving influence. And Tom Hamilton. In the room, wardrobe ideas, Mimi was the tour de force. And Tom is the sound artist. We’d be in the room, and thinking “oh, I couldn’t understand that word, I couldn’t hear this.” Then, we take a step outside, listen to what he’s hearing, and it’s beautiful. He’s mixed it and it’s got a lovely sheen. He’s a wizard. It’s six voices, that’s all it is.

GP

Speaking of sound sheen, I serendipitously recently met your sound guy Greg who did the sound for you in Thomas Paine. One of the few things we have as artists in this city is a great community.

PP

It’s pretty wonderful. The scene is legit. Everyone is an expert at what they’re doing, and no matter how little time people have, the great ones are like, yeah, I’ll help you out, or come to your show. I’m working with Joan La Barbara on Thomas Paine, and she’s killer. But the thing that’s even better than that, and Miguel Francioni, whose recordings I knew before I knew them as people, I mean to me, these are the great ones. And then, they get into rehearsal, and are asking about the next rehearsal. They want to work. Its not like the young superstar who wants to sight read on the performance. It’s so different. And that’s what I love about the people in Varispeed, everyone wants to make it great and do hard work. They know their shit coming in.

GP

And thingNY is the same? You’re the head of that?

PP

I founded it, now we co-run it. Me, Dave Ruder and Gelsy Bell, who are also in Varispeed, along with Jeff Young who played in the Thomas Paine opera. Andrew Livingston, bass. Erin Rodgers, saxophone. We kind of all co-run it.

GP

My friend Vasu Panicker who used to be the managing director of the teen new music ensemble Face the Music, told me how much i would love thingNY just a couple weeks ago.

 

PP

He’s a big fan. He’s another powerhouse, he doesn’t stop. The passion.

GP

Yeah, he’s diligent about the work. There’s a line in the arts world, particularly with the avant garde and new music, between those who work hard and those who don’t. Sometimes in the arts, and maybe this is just my experience in various levels of theater, sometimes you get people who love to not work too hard. It’s a different art.

PP

I don’t know the theater world at all, but I’m getting to know it by working on Thomas Paine. Actors eat junk food. I love that actors eat junk food. It’s endearing. And they’re there an hour before their call to warm up and get ready, so I don’t know about the hard work thing.

GP

I guess ultimately the material/content informs the process. The stuff you do can be so rigorous. I’ll remember clear as day your ability to physicalize your voice in a rigorous way. Singer or not a singer, that’s something that any great performer will do.

PP

Yeah, like the Celine Dion thing. I don’t know it’s something my wife does when she’s singing Celine Dion. The chest slap hand wave.

GP

There was definitely a chest slap hand wave analog.

PP

Yes. This is to say I’m getting established as doing a certain type of thing. Which is fine, I like that. Dave Malloy came to see a piece I did with Jeff Young called Patriots. And it’s another ranty monologue. So the summer comes, he says, “I wrote this piece Pip. I want you to do this.” Yeah, he was right there. “You want me to do this shit? That’s great. I’ll just do that!” I wish I had more time in this workshop we had just a couple weeks ago, but Rachel Chavkin was there, and was finally like, “I know you do your thing. Chill. Rethink this, and rethink this.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, right. There’s a craft to this. It’s not just improvise the first thing that comes along. That’s what Varispeed did with Bob Ashley. It’s not easy. It’s easy the first time. It’s easy to make the choices the 2nd or 3rd time, But then, no. There’s more to this. Anyone can read the words. Anyone knows the stuff, there are references that aren’t too obscure, and it’s pretty easy to follow the convoluted story and the tangents. It’s a fun read, anyone can put up the book and do it. But the fun part is putting the work into it. Finding the how-can-this-reach-the-most-amount-of-people, how-can-i-make-this-in-the-clearest-way. Maybe not, what-is-the-right-way-to-do-it, but definitely what-are-the-wrong-ways-to-do-it, and avoid those.

GP

I like that, get all the wrong stuff out of the way and clear the air for all the possibilities. Something funny at the Joe’s Pub show, I remember Philip Glass was there. And at the end of the show, he was standing in the doorway as everybody’s passing around him and exiting. And he had this sense of pride, just staring out into the room. I think he loves Dave, he’s a total Dave Malloy fan. I saw it on his face, “my progeny.” I love understanding the family trees of art in New York.

PP

In undergrad, we did the composition family tree. I studied with this person, I studied with this person. And we tried to see who could go back to Beethoven. By tracing the history. It doesn’t mean anything but it’s fun.

GP

It’s a post modern exercise. What’s the Deep Listening Institute?

PP

It’s Pauline Oliveros’ thing. My compositions were in a book of scores they publish every year. Gelsey Bell is another artist in there, they have her scores in there. I can’t remember the name of the publication but it’s all by the Deep Listening Institute. I got to know Pauline’s stuff through a workshop we did of one of my pieces in Philly in 2007. When I first got back to the city after grad school, I didn’t have any jobs, no one was paying me to write music. New York was so full of great artists that had their jobs. So I thought, I live in New Jersey, I’ll apply to the Philly chapter of this call for submissions. And so, I had this great opportunity to work with Pauline for two weeks, working on a new composition of mine. She’s been a fan of thingNY for a while, and has written pieces for our spam submission, which is an online campaign to get as much material from as many people as possible, and we make an evening where we have to perform everything we receive.

GP

Was that annual?

PP

It was until we burned ourselves out. There were 4 ½ hour concerts where we didn’t stop. 80-120 pieces. And none of them performed very well, because we have a month and a half to put together 80-120 pieces. Each composer wants to write the most complicated thing they can write. And then, Pauline is like, “sit in the corner and listen.” We can do that piece.

GP

Sounds like the perfect storm. It opens up the possibilities.

PP

Everybody in the group likes ambitious, big things, so we do the ambitious, big things. We don’t always do them well, but we try them first. It’s getting better. This is the great thing about Perfect Lives. OH, I haven’t even said. We’re doing Perfect Lives in Jersey City on September 19. It’s another all-day Robert Ashley opera. Because we’ve done it so many times now, we’re really getting it. We’re working with Jersey City artists to play in various episodes,and we’re doing it from 11am-11pm. This’ll be our fifth iteration. And next year were doing it in Philly. There’s a lot of Bob Ashley happening in the world right now.

GP

I have only recently learned about him.

PP

Ashley’s got a style. It’s all in timing and inflection. And that’s the musicality of it. If you’re just dipping your toes into Bob Ashley, check out Perfect Lives. Which I didn’t like the first time I heard it, because I thought it was cheesy and 80s. But when I got the text…

GP

That one’s the opera that was made for TV?

PP

Yeah. And the first time I watched it, I was like, what’s the big deal with Robert Ashley? And then I got to know his other stuff, and then I realized that this is the great one. The music is campy and cute, but the text is so beautiful. The music needs to be nostalgic because its all about remembering this small scene in a Midwest town. And it’s all from his memories. There’s an episode about a bank robbery, and its essentially him in the backseat watching his two friends elope. And there’s a love he has for this woman and he’s watching it end. It’s beautiful, and universal. To Americans. Americans all get this experience, what it feels like to be a teenager in America and to have a supermarket that’s different from every other country. When people say he’s the great American opera writer, It’s because he the writes operas about what it’s like to be American.

GP

And Crash fulfills that?

PP

Crash is probably the most autobiographical, although all his works are. If you know Perfect Lives, if you know Now Eleanor’s Idea, and his operas, you’ll hear characters come up from before. But if you don’t know those things, then sonically, and also the ideas that are conveyed, it will all be so heartwarming.

GP

I hear something so transcendent and vast in Perfect Lives. You don’t get that in contemporary art a lot.

PP

Bob Ashley definitely does not fit with the classical music mold. A lot of musicians don’t even know about Ashley.  They say I want notated music. And I love notated music, great. But he has more to do with theater. It’s not about acting, it’s about voicing the way that you would.

GP

True minimalism of avant garde. You don’t need to shove it in people’s faces.

PP

And what he has that what the avant garde doesn’t is an earnestness, and honestness. It’s kind of populist. He’s like, these are the things I like talking about, I hope you like listening to them.

GP

I’m coming Friday night.

—–

I switched off the recorder to say goodbye, and we continued to talk.

___

PP

This is the B side of the album. You said that arts are falling to entertainment. But the thing is, if they DID, they would treat it the same as entertainment, and think, “Oh, I liked that, I’ll go see it again tomorrow.” But they don’t do it. It’s in this nebulous world where it’s controlled by grant organizations that want something new. Everyone likes new things. But, they didn’t come see my old thing. Come see my old thing, I’ve done it once and thirty people showed up. I think we need more of the parade to see work more than once and re-interpreted.

GP

I watched a talk of Peter Sellars [also here and here and here; unfortunately I can’t find the entire talk], and he said in order for the arts to flourish in this country, it needs to become a part of the daily conversation the way that sports and money are. People need to create a language of the arts for each other. Everybody talks about entertainment, movies and One Direction. But, when will the public talk about relating process, and the long-term scope of an artist’s work?

PP

There’s backlash of that too. The whole Bjork thing at MoMA. I didn’t see it, so I don’t know it well. But there’s often backlack when people try to make art popular. Marina Abramovic has become a household name, I think that’s great for art.

GP

There’s a complete lack of a support system to foster new work.

PP

I went to school in Glasgow, and people over there think America is great because we have the patronage system. They think that’s great because it fosters great ideas and people always make good art when you’re struggling. There’s a great line in Crash, “The big problem I had with teaching was that I was teaching poverty; I was teaching that you had to be poor and struggle to make great art,” which isn’t true. And, it totally fits. The grass is always greener. The Europeans have great support for their arts. But, there is so much great art here. Unfortunately, performance often can’t have a life past it’s initial premiere. Things can be birthed, but it’s hard for stuff to have a toddler existence.

GP

That’s something I hope to push out into the real world, just the knowledge in this country of the importance of the arts. I’m preaching to the choir here.

PP

But hopefully you’re reaching out to people who aren’t artists. Not because it’s important or an institution, but you’ll have an emotional connection to it. You’ll like it, there’s something great about it. I really think this piece [Crash] is enjoyable. You go in and you cry, it’s beautiful. Maybe it’s just that. Everyone should go see it so they can tell their friends, so that their friends can say, “you should go see this, cause it’s beautiful and you’ll cry and you’ll really enjoy it.” And then they’ll see their friends and say, “you should go see this, cause it’s beautiful and you’ll cry and you’ll enjoy it.” And then everyone’s blubbering, everyone’s crying and hugging each other in the streets, crying about Bob Ashley and telling each other to see Crash.

GP

Here’s another botched idea. Somebody said that art is a service, like psychology. It’s a spiritual service, like religion and other mental health institutions.

PP

It separates us from the animals.

GP

Art is enabling humans. Innovation and curiosity.

PP

And about your role, nobody wants to trash a young new artist. No stepping on toes, just painting a scene of what happened. Which isn’t that useful. It would be great if there was a comment on it. Especially, and I think specifically for avant garde and experimental music, if there’s a performance practice of it. They need to comment on the performers. “This performer did this, which was great because the other performer did this, and it was different. The last time I saw the piece, the other performer did it like this.” So, it’s telling me how the work is evolving over the generations of doing it, rather than only, “this was what the scenery looked like, and this was what happened.”

GP

Art needs context. Going back to the sports analog that Peter Sellars made, you get so much context with sports. People talking incessantly about the information and content relating to those performances.

PP

It shouldn’t be the artist’s job to contextualize things. It should come from your medium. Not in talkbacks after shows either. People who write about it should just give an audience a little bit more. If you like this, then see this other thing. That creates a dialogue.

GP

Culturebot encourages that. Speak from yourself, and how the piece is currently interacting with everything.

PP

Contextualize that shit, man. Even if you hate it. I don’t think you will, but put it in context.

GP

Yeah, his work is still pretty new to me. I’ve had a close relationship with Face the Music, but that’s a piece of the pie. It’s going to be a multi-layered experience for me.

PP

Can I tell you my favorite Bob Ashley pieces, and you can listen to them and they’ll help contextualize it?

GP

Please.

PP

You should definitely hear a couple episodes of Perfect Lives. The mega work.

GP

With David Van Tieghem.

PP

I love him. He does the theme song for one of the NPR shows. Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, or something like that.

GP

Radiolab?

PP

Not Radiolab. It’s something like Weekend Edition or On The Media. That’s it, On The Media. Our theme song is composed by David Van Tieghem. So, check out Perfect Lives. My favorite is Foreign Experiences. It doesn’t have Bob’s voice in it at all, there’s his son Sam Ashley and Jacqueline Humbert. Their voices are so musical and so pretty. It’s just incredible. And then, there’s the excerpt of Crash online.

PP

Are you in that recording?

PP

Yes, it’s on the Roulette site actually. So check that out. And if you want to get a little bit of what we do, on the Varispeed site are all the videos of the complete Perfect Lives that we’ve done in New York, and when we did it in the Catskills.

GP

Where in the Catskills?

PP

Mount Tremper Arts. We did it there, in Phoenicia, and in Woodstock.

GP

I’ll check that stuff out.