From silver to the sky. A look at the roots of electronic music: Morton Subotnick & Lillevan

18 november, 2011
Place
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 400
Organized by
Museo Reina Sofía and Red Bull Music Academy
From silver to the sky. A look at the roots of electronic music: Morton Subotnick & Lillevan
From silver to the sky. A look at the roots of electronic music: Morton Subotnick & Lillevan

Morton Subotnick (Los Angeles, 1933), an American musician and composer, is considered one of the founders of electronic music. In 1967 he released the first purely electronic album in history, Silver Apples of The Moon, a forerunner of what is now known as electronic music. He founded, along with Ramón Sender (son of the Spanish writer Ramón J. Sender), the San Francisco Tape Music Center, a groundbreaking institution in the development of new techniques for sound processing in the 1960s and 70s, and he also manufactured one of the first synthesizers, the Buchla. His career as a composer continues to this day.

In this concert, a collaborative project between Museo Reina Sofía and the Red Bull Music Academy, Morton Subotnick is accompanied by the visual artist Lillevan, a frequent collaborator of musicians on the experimental music scene (such as Fennesz, Vladislav Delay), who will offer a visual interpretation of Subotnick's music. The concert will feature pieces from Silver Apples Of The Moon (1967) and from another one of his pioneering albums, A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur (1978).

As an introduction to the audiovisual concert, Morton Subotnick will give a lecture in which he discusses his long career and the origins of electronic music. Following the concert, a student from Red Bull Music Academy, Anenon, will offer a DJ session in the auditorium's lobby, drawing connections between Morton Subotnick's discourse and the music of today.

 


Program

8 p.m. Lecture by Morton Subotnick: "Tape Recorders, The Transistor And The Credit Card: A Personal History"
9 p.m. DJ Session by Red Bull Music Academy: Anenon
9:30 p.m. Concert by Morton Subotnick & Lillevan
10:30 p.m. End of activity