New Series: Pioneers of Electronic Music

During the corona days at home, I have been spending some time in my music room especially with my synthesizers and more specifically with my modular gear. While doing so, I thought of a new post series about electronic music (my other favorite genre with jazz, that I had written a lot of stuff in the past years).

This time I plan not to write about the genre itself but feature its main pioneers that have made a lasting impact on the development of the genre. The posts will not be in chronological order or in any kind of order whatsoever as I will only be mentioning one great electronic music artist in each post that comes to my mind...

So for my first post on this topic, I chose Suzanne Ciani who is a composer, recording artist, record label executive (Seventh Wave) and a true pioneer in the field of electronic music and sound design. She is best loved for her fifteen albums of original music which feature her performances in a broad array of expressions: pure electronic, solo piano, piano with orchestra, and piano with jazz ensemble. Her music, renowned for its romantic, healing, and aesthetic qualities has found a rapidly growing international audience, and her performances include numerous benefits for humanitarian causes. Today, she is 73 years young and still very influential in the electronic music world.

In the eighties and early nineties, in order to finance her recording projects, Ciani brought her expertise to Madison Avenue. Her New York-based commercial production company, Ciani-Musica, Inc., was the leader in the field of sound design and TV spot scoring, creating award-winning music for a host of high profile Fortune 500 clients, including Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and General Electric. Additionally, Ciani has scored the Lily Tomlin feature 'The Incredible Shrinking Woman,' and 'Mother Teresa', as well as scoring for the TV daytime serial 'One Life to Live'.

In the early nineties, Ciani relocated to northern California to concentrate on her artistic career from her seaside studio. She has toured extensively throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, including Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, and Asia.

Her many recognitions include five Grammy nominations for Best New Age Album, an INDIE award for Best New Age Album, numerous Clios, a Golden Globe, Keyboard Magazine's "New Age Keyboardist of the Year," and the 2017 Moog Innovation Award.

Ciani is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds a Masters in Music Composition from the University of California at Berkeley. "A Life in Waves", a documentary about Ciani’s life and work by filmmakers Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason, debuted at SXSW in 2017.

Here is a trailer for the documentary;

Her success with electronic music has her dubbed "Diva of the Diode" and "America's first female synth hero".

In the early days of synthesis, Ciani says a dichotomy formed almost instantly. Robert Moog and Don Buchla each invented their synthesizers at roughly the same time. But whereas the Moog synthesizer was rooted in Western musical traditions, and almost always was tethered to a 12-note-scale-based keyboard, Buchla eschewed that idea, considering the new technology an opportunity for unfettered musical explorations. Most important of all, the Buchla was designed with performance in mind.
“It was compact and portable. There were people out playing live, being interactive, learning and teaching performance techniques, just like you would with any instrument,” Ciani says. From those times Buchla became the signature instrument of Ciani (listen to her Live Buchla Concerts album). Of course, we can see and hear her playing plenty of different instruments during her live performances and recordings.

It is really mesmerizing to watch her create sounds with machines and tangled multi-colored patch cables, knobs, buttons, and other weird looking tools. Suzanne Ciani has spent much of her career testing the limits of one of these cumbersome instruments with steep learning curves. So dedicated to its oscillating drones, burbles and bleeps did she become that has jokingly referred to the Buchla as “her boyfriend”.

She was one of the few women on the frontline of electronic innovation in the 1970s, a five-time Grammy-nominated recording artist, a pioneer of the new age genre and the first solo female composer to soundtrack a Hollywood film. Brilliantly, she also invented Coca-Cola’s infamous “pop and pour” sound effect.

Now sit back and relax and watch Ciani performing 'Improvisation On Five Sequences' live at Elevation Festival 1049 in Lauenen, near Gstaad, on 2nd February 2019.

I hope you liked the new series and please comment below about your favorite and influential electronic music artists...