The electronic music pioneer joins the podcast to discuss 'CIANI/ORKEST,' her live album pairing the Buchla synthesizer with the 50-piece Metropole Orkest, and why she has always heard the instrument as orchestral.
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This week, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on five-time Grammy-nominated composer Suzanne Ciani.
Suzanne has spent decades innovating electronic music on the Buchla synthesizer, an instrument as intimate to her as any acoustic musician's.
Suzanne has multiple projects out this year: CIANI/ORKEST, a live album with the fifty-piece Metropole Orkest, conducted by Simon Dobson; a collaborative live album with British electronic producer Actress; and the score for John Wilson's idiosyncratic new documentary, The History of Concrete.
We talk about why an artist who's needed total control throughout her career said yes to an orchestra, a producer, and a filmmaker all in one year, what it's like hearing an instrument built for one pair of hands answered by fifty more, and her pet peeve about volume at live shows.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Suzanne Ciani’s CIANI/ORKEST)
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00:00 Introduction
01:28 Performing in Cathedrals: Reverb, Space, and Reflections
04:25 Learning There Was an Audience
05:38 Quadraphonic Sound and the Trouble With Big Rooms
06:44 A Pet Peeve About Volume
07:08 The Long Road to Releasing CIANI/ORKEST
11:05 One Instrument Among Fifty: Buchla Meets Orchestra
13:21 Where the Project Began: Berklee and the Boston Conservatory
15:33 Analog Modular's Second Chance
16:54 No MIDI: A Korg, a Click, and Simon Dobson
20:57 Trust, Arrangers, and the Shape of a Wave
22:58 Narrative Without Words
24:28 Nature, Water, and Spatial Sound
25:21 Freedom, the Buchla Cookbook, and Slow Time
29:37 Collaboration After Decades of Control
32:39 Total Control in the Commercial World
34:02 The History of Concrete and John Wilson
35:44 The Busy Last Hurrah
37:08 Speaking the Word of the Buchla
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Visit Suzanne Ciani at https://www.sevwave.com
and follow on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/sevwave
and YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/user/SuzanneCiani
and her catalog is on Bandcamp → https://suzanneciani.bandcamp.com
Purchase 'CIANI/ORKEST' on quadraphonic vinyl from AKP Recordings → https://akprecordings.com/products/ciani-orkest
and digitally from Bandcamp → https://suzanneciani.bandcamp.com/album/ciani-orkest
or Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/ciani-orkest-suzanne-ciani-metropole-orkest-simon-dobson/bwyfcypp4h8r2
You can also listen on your streaming platform of choice → https://album.link/i/1896218095
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