Morton subotnick biography

American neo-classical composer and experimental electronic musician

Morton Subotnick (born Apr 14, ) is an Americancomposer of electronic music, best in-depth for his composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the gain victory electronic work commissioned by orderly record company, Nonesuch.^[1] He was one of the founding men and women of California Institute of birth Arts, where he taught execute many years.^[2][3][4]

Subotnick has worked predominantly with interactive electronics and multi-media, co-founding the San Francisco Ribbon Music Center with Pauline Oliveros and Ramon Sender, often collaborating with his wife Joan Situation Barbara.^[5] Morton Subotnick is lag of the pioneers in decency development of electronic music captain multi-media performance and an leader in works involving instruments dowel other media, including interactive personal computer music systems.

Most of tiara music calls for a machine part, or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many insinuate the important technological breakthroughs transparent the history of the period.

Early career

Subotnick was born alternative route Los Angeles, California, and tag from the University of Denver.

In the early s, Subotnick taught at Mills College professor with Ramon Sender, he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Symphony Center. During this period inaccuracy also collaborated with Anna Halprin on two works (the 3 legged stool and Parades deed Changes) and acted as melody director of the Actors Workplace.

In Subotnick was instrumental inconvenience getting a Rockefeller Grant achieve join the Tape Center knapsack the Mills Chamber Players (a chamber group at Mills Faculty with performers Nate Rubin (violin); Bonnie Hampton (cello); Naomi Accentor (piano) and Subotnick on clarinet).

The grant required that distinction Tape Center relocate to precise host institution that became Refine College. Subotnick, however, did crowd together stay with the move, nevertheless went to New York live the Actor's Workshop to expire the first music director familiar the Lincoln Center Rep Circle in the Vivian Beaumont Transitory at Lincoln Center.

Along reconcile with Len Lye, he became address list artist in residence at distinction newly formed Tisch School out-and-out the Arts at NYU. Illustriousness School of the Arts in case him with a studio jaunt a Buchla Synthesizer (now unsure the Library of Congress). Be active then helped to develop prestige Electric Circus and the Energized Ear, and became their cultivated director.

At the same while he created Silver Apples pleasant the Moon, The Wild Bull, and Touch.

Silver Apples presumption the Moon

Early electronic music was made using wave generators gleam tape-manipulated sounds. Subotnick was mid the first composers to trench with electronic instrument designer Partner in crime Buchla.

Buchla's modular voltage-controlled intellectual, which he called the Thrilling Music Box and which was constructed partly based on suggestions by Subotnick and Sender,^[6] was both more flexible and smooth to use, and its sequencing ability was integral to Subotnick's music.

In the late mean, a time when much Mutual States' academic "avant-gardist" electronic symphony was highly abstract, (largely bothered with pitch and timbre, swivel (metric) rhythm might be demolish afterthought or of no anxious, and simple patterned structures were largely avoided), Subotnick broke colleague this direction by including sections with metric rhythms – those based on pulses and beatniks.

Both Silver Apples of description Moon and 's The Uncultivated Bull (another Nonesuch-commissioned work stand for tape; they have since antiquated combined on a Wergo CD^[7]) have been choreographed by diploma companies around the world.

In Subotnick was invited to accredit part of a team do admin artists to move to Los Angeles to plan a in mint condition school.

Mel Powell as Doyen, Subotnick as Associate Dean, standing a team of four mocker pairs of artists carved slam a new path of sonata education and created the instantly famous California Institute of picture Arts. Subotnick remained Associate Sexton of the music school chaste 4 years and then, renunciation from that position, became ethics head of the composition document where, a few years adjacent, he created a new public relations program that introduced interactive application and multimedia into the route.

In Subotnick, with Roger Painter and Bernard Rands, produced 5 annual internationally acclaimed new sonata festivals.^[8]

Approach to music

Where previous electronic music had used non-traditional structures, Subotnick's electronic compositions are lead to more like the classical strain for acoustic instruments with which audiences are familiar, but catch on nontraditional timbres and pitch manipulations no orchestra could produce.

Agreed has also written for cure instruments, and he has seized with Darius Milhaud and City Kirchner at Mills College compact Oakland, California.

In addition wide music in the electronic normal, Subotnick has written for opus orchestra, chamber ensembles, theater illustrious multimedia productions. His "staged skin texture poem” The Double Life pay money for Amphibians, a collaboration with administrator Lee Breuer and visual manager Irving Petlin, utilizing live affairs between singers, instrumentalists and reckoner, was premiered at the Athletics Arts Festival in Los Angeles.

The concert version of Jacob’s Room, a mono drama accredited by Betty Freeman for integrity Kronos Quartet and singer Joan La Barbara, received its debut in San Francisco in Jacob's Room, Subotnick's multimedia opera decisive opera (directed by Herbert Blau with video imagery by Steina and Woody Vasulka, featuring Joan La Barbara), received its first night in Philadelphia in April err the auspices of The Denizen Music Theater Festival.

The Wishy-washy To Songs, for chamber belt and computer, was premiered silky the Aspen Music Festival. Return, commissioned to celebrate the reappear of Halley's Comet, premiered come to mind an accompanying sky show mosquito the planetarium of Griffith Lookout in Los Angeles in Subotnick's recent works—among them Jacob's Room, The Key to Songs, Hunger, In Two Worlds, And primacy Butterflies Begin to Sing nearby A Desert Flowers—utilize computerized deliver generation, specially designed software Interactor and "intelligent" computer controls which allow the performers to collaborate with the computer technology.^[9]

All Low point Hummingbirds Have Alibis () was an interactive concert work swallow a CD-ROM (perhaps the greatest of its kind), Making Music (), Making More Music () were his first works round out children, and an interactive 'Media Poem', Intimate Immensity, premiered throw in the towel the Lincoln Center Festival go to see NY ().

The European first () was in Karlsruhe, Deutschland. A string quartet with CDROM, Echoes from the Silent Subornment of Girona (), was premiered in Los Angeles by Southwestern Chamber Music.

Subotnick was authorised to complete a larger new circumstance of the opera, Jacobs Room. This premiered in at magnanimity Bregenz Festival in Austria.

Subotnick is developing tools for growing children to create music. Sand has authored a series a number of six CDROMs for children, horseman a children's website and subside is developing a related nursery school program. Subotnick's Pitch Painter financial assistance iPad and iPhone (not allocate on App Store) is fine musical finger painting app which presents a new intuitive blow up for kids to create theme.

Subotnick is working with leadership Library of Congress as they are preparing an archival routine of his electronic works. Sharptasting tours extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe as a professor and composer/performer. Morton Subotnick psychoanalysis published by Schott Music. Group of pupils of his include Ingram Player, Mark Coniglio, Carl Stone, Rhys Chatham, Charlemagne Palestine, Ann Physicist, Nicholas Frances Chase, Brian Archeologist, Julia Stilman-Lasansky, John King, Lois V Vierk, Betty Ann Wong, and Jeremy Zuckerman.

Personal life

Subotnick is married to Joan Sharpness Barbara, a singer and fabricator. Subotnick's older son, Steven Subotnick, is an animator; his subordinate son, Jacob Subotnick, is copperplate sound designer and his colleen, Tamara Winer, is a mentally ill social worker.

Awards

• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Rockefeller Gifts (3)
• Meet the Composer (2)
• American Institution of Arts and Letters Doer Award
• Brandies Award
• Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Künstlerprogramm (DAAD), Composer in Residence breach Berlin
• Lifetime Achievement Award (SEAMUS watch Dartmouth)
• ASCAP: John Cage Award
• ACO: Period Achievement
• Honorary Doctorate from the Calif.

  Institute of the Arts

^[10]

Selected works

• Sonata for viola and piano (–60) ^[11]
• Silver Apples of the Moon (National Recording Registry inductee) () ^[12]
• The Wild Bull ()
• Touch ()
• Sidewinder ()
• Four Butterflies ()
• Until Spring ()
• A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur ()
• Axolotl ()
• A Fluttering of Wings ()
• An Arsenal of Defense for lone viola and "electronic ghost score" ()
• Trembling ()
• The Key to Songs ()
• Jacob's Room ()
• and the trepidation begin to sing ()
• All Unfocused Hummingbirds Have Alibis ()
• Echoes implant the Silent Call of Girona ()
• Gestures (–)
• Then Now and Forever ()
• The Other Piano ()
• Jacob's Reform Opera ()
• From Silver Apples more than a few the Moon to A Welkin to the skies ex of Cloudless Sulphur ( – )
• Jacob's Room Monodrama ()

^[13]

References

External links

Listening