Leading up to the Roulette 2026 Gala honoring the Robert Ashley Band alongside Thomas and Kamala Buckner, Roulette presents a screening of Perfect Lives. At the center of this landmark work first completed for broadcast in 1983 is the hypnotic voice of Robert Ashley, whose continuous song narrates the events of the story, supported by “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s piano inventions and choral commentary by Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem. The opera follows two musicians who have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at the Perfect Lives Lounge, fall in with two locals, and hatch a plan to remove a sizable amount of money from The Bank. If they are caught, it will be a crime—but if they are not, it will be Art.
7:00pm – Introductions from members of the original production
7:30pm – Perfect Lives Screening (runtime 2 hours and 55 min)
Choose the ticket level that feels right for you. All proceeds from the evening support Roulette’s programs and mission to present and preserve extraordinary experimental music, movement, and media—and above all, support artists.
$25 — General Admission
$50 — General Admission + 2 drink tickets
$100 — General Admission + 2 drink tickets + Robert Ashley Perfect Lives Hardcover Book (Published by published by Burning Books in association with Archer Fields Press, 1991)
Food will be available for purchase.
This is a special benefit screening to support Roulette. Member and Patron benefits do not apply—thank you for your support!
Ashley, Tyranny and Peter Gordon first performed three of the opera’s seven episodes at The Kitchen in January 1978, leading Carlota Schoolman and Mary Griffin to invite Ashley to make the work for television. John Sanborn came on board as Television Director. A year later, two more episodes had been added for performances at DTW. The first presentations of all seven episodes were in the fall of 1980 at the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam, followed by the Festival d’Automne in Paris.
After three years of fund-raising and development and continual touring, the Kitchen obtained finishing funds from Great Britain’s Channel Four, and Perfect Lives was completed in the fall of 1983. Since then, the opera’s reputation has grown. Lovely Music made it available on CD and DVD, and there were numerous closed-circuit screenings and two major publications of the opera’s libretto (Burning Books in 1991 and the Dalkey Archive Press in 2011).
While Ashley and his cohort stopped performing the piece live in 1983, at least four performance ensembles (Varispeed, Matmos, Trystero, and Alex Waterman’s Spanish language Vidas Perfectas) created live versions of the opera, arrangements inspired by the Perfect Lives video. Lovely Music commissioned an HD upgrade of Perfect Lives from Dean Winkler, and Lovely’s new Blu-Ray package was released in May 2023.
Created by ROBERT ASHLEY
with
“BLUE” GENE TYRANNY
PETER GORDON
CARLOTA SCHOOLMAN
JOHN SANBORN
JILL KROESEN
DAVID VAN TIEGHEM
JACQUELINE HUMBERT
PAUL SHORR
MARY PERILLO
DEAN WINKLER
Supporting Roulette = Supporting ArtistsRoulette was founded by artists for artists, and has stayed true to that ethos for nearly five decades. We strive to be the best place in New York City for artists at every stage in their careers, presenting over 100 concerts a year, paying artists guaranteed fees, and preserving their work in our extensive public archive. Through our Awarded Artist program, we have distributed over $2.3M in commissioning, residency, and fellowship fees to artists developing new work, many of whom have gone on to become leaders in their fields or later recognized as MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize winners, and NEA Jazz masters. A ticket for this benefit concert goes directly to supporting our mission of supporting artists making new, experimental work.
