Author’s Notes

“Robert Ashley’s music just keeps getting better”

Robert Ashley died at his home in New York March 3 from complications of cirrhosis of the liver, three months after he finished his last opera, “Crash,” to be premiered at the 2014 Whitney Museum Biennial. Ahsley was 83.

How Johnson and Ashley used to talk in New York in the late ‘70s about how to find their own personal music, and how Bob evolved his “talking band.”