Derived from texts by residents of Roosevelt Island, and Bioy Casares, A Necessary Music is a musically conceived science fiction film featuring Robert Ashley. The takes long, languid and beautifully pictorial - in a narration shared between Robert Ashley (perhaps one of the most distinguished voices in contemporary music) and dwellers of Roosevelt Island (a small sliver of land situated between NYC burrows Manhattan and Queens) - A Necessary Music is a musically conceived science fiction film, exploring the social imaginary of a utopian landscape through directed attention to the voices that inhabit it.