Coffee and Conversation for parades & changes, replays

A pre-show discussion of Anna Halprin, Morton Subotnick and Anne Collod’s parades & changes, replays moderated by Morton Subotnick and Wendy Perron.

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Moderator Biographies:

Morton Subotnick is one of the innovators of classical electronic music. His early work with Buchlasynthesizers took him to the peak of the avant garde electronica world of the 60s. He has been an innovator in works that involve electronics and acoustic instruments, acoustic instruments manipulated electronically, and other multimedia combinations. His work often explores the way physical gestures of the performer can be manipulated electronically, and the influence that electronic processing has on a performance.

In 1961 he co-founded along with Ramon Sender, the San Francisco tape Music Center. Among the people involved in the studio during its early days were Pauline Oliveros and Donald Buchla, an inventor of a voltage controlled synthesizer. Morton Subotnick also served as Music Director of the Ann Halprin Dance Company and the San Francisco Dancer’s Workshop.

His most famous work is from the late 1960s, Silver Apples of the Moon. This is an electronic tone poem created using the Buchla modular synthesizer. The work was extremely experimental for its day, and to this day sounds innovative. In it, Morton Subotnick applies modular control signals to all sorts of parameters of the sound, sending sounds careening through the left/right listening field, changing the timbre, controlling the speed of pulses and the pitch of sounds. It’s an electronic tour de force.

For the next few years Morton Subotnick wrote many pieces for record, including The Wild Bull, Touch, and Until Spring. These were all created using modular synthesis on Buchla synthesizers. In the late 70s and 80s, he explored the combination of live performance and electronics with many works. Some of his better known works from this period include The Key to Songs, and Ascent into Air. His more recent work has combined orchestral ensembles with various electronic processing and sound generation. Jacob’s Room, a piece commissioned for the Kronos String Quartet and Joan La Barbara, a vocalist, is a sort of multimedia opera. Other works include interactive CD-roms, and even computer music games for children.

The music community has recognized the achievements of Morton Subotnick. He has won many National grants and awards. He lives in New York and California, teaches at New York University and the California Institute of the Arts, and travels widely and often, presenting his music.

Wendy Perron, editor in chief of Dance Magazine, danced with the Trisha Brown Company in the 1970s and has performed with many other NYC choreographers. Her own group appeared at Dance Theater Workshop, the Joyce Theater, Danspace Project, and the Lincoln Center Festival, as well as in cities throughout the U.S. She was one of eight choreographers profiled in the documentary film Retracing Steps: American Dance Since Postmodernism. She has taught dance at many colleges including Bennington and Princeton, and in contemporary dance centers in Europe and Russia. In addition to contributing articles to The New York Times, The Village Voice, Ballet Review, and Dance Magazine, Wendy has written a brief memoir in Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible, edited by Sally Banes. She was Associate Director of Jacob’s Pillow in the early 1990s and is currently artistic advisor to the Fall for Dance festival at NY City Center.