Robert Ashley: Superior Seven/Tract

by "Blue" Gene Tyranny"Superior Seven" is for a flute soloist and a computer-controlled electronic orchestra that presents seven independent ensembles of various numbers and kinds of instruments. The tones, their octave displacements, the event occurrences (say, of the sustain vocal chord), etc., were originally generated from the word composition of various newspaper ads for "superior" houses. The music is built from overlapping long cycles that generate a sustained aura of great beauty. "Tract," performed here by famed new music baritone Tom Buckner with electronic orchestra, is an orchestration of a work from 1955, and is a serial composition with a feeling for shifting, actually illusionary, harmonic centers. The music seems to float in your mind. (See also Ashley's wonderful ensemble piece for flute and chamber orchestra "Outcome Inevitable" in the collection Relache: Outcome Inevitable.)