The synthesizer designer Don Buchla helped shape the sound of a generation of records, and Suzanne Ciani was among the first people to master his Buchla modular analog synthesizer. She earned a master’s degree in composition at UC Berkeley, where she met him, and her work with that instrument grew from the technology that became the basis of electronic music. Born in Ohio, she remains one of the key figures in that field.
She launched Ciani/Musica in 1974, a venture through which she produced sounds for major brands such as AT&T, General Electric and Coca-Cola. Among her creations there was the “pop & pour” sound logo for the soda and the Columbia Pictures intro score. Across her career she has issued more than 25 studio and live albums, and she holds five Grammy nominations, all in the new age category.
She is now 80 years old and has seen a late career resurgence thanks to her live modular synthesizer performances. Those shows have put her on the dance/electronic festival circuit, where she has made friends such as Floating Points and worked with collaborator Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
Home in Northern California
Billboard spoke with Ciani over Zoom from her home in Northern California. She is in the midst of selling her house after 34 years — a place she never believed she would depart because it was so exquisitely beautiful. Yet she has decided she is ready to move on.
She said “I just wanted a new chapter,”. “I wrote many albums there. I had a beautiful life there, and now I’m ready for something else. It’s healthy. It’s stimulating. The basis of technology is change. It’s built in.”
First Albums and LPs
Ciani listened to romantic classical music morning, noon and night, swooning at the emotion of it, after her mother purchased two records at a fire sale and brought them home. The records were a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto and a Grieg Piano Concerto, and her mother bought them for her.
Parents and Their Jobs
Her father worked as an orthopedic surgeon. Her mother raised six children and spent her life running the home, a consummate homemaker. This mom could sew anything, build anything, and kept tools tucked away in her jewelry box.
What Her Parents Thought of Her Work
The woman’s father came from Italy. He raised five daughters and one son, and he believed that women existed to find husbands, produce children and serve their husbands. He didn’t share much enthusiasm for her desire to be her own person.
While she lived in New York City and earned a great deal of money, he visited and noticed her Mercedes convertible. For her, it was simply a normal part of daily existence. For him, it spoke volumes about her path.
“He said, ‘All you care about is money,’ ” she recalled, “and just deeply took it as a comment on the direction of my life.” She hadn’t seen herself in that light. She didn’t feel that way. She did have it, but she didn’t care about it. That situation made her focus a bit more on how she projected her values and about what her lifestyle was communicating.
The Car She Bought
The very first non-gear purchase she made after beginning to earn money as an artist was a car. Machines were something she loved, and to her, a vehicle counted as one. It fit her interests perfectly.
A gorgeous vehicle was what she purchased, without any knowledge of automobiles whatsoever. She entered a car dealer, paid the full asking price and took it home with her. It remained stored in a garage just across the road. The arrangement might come across as somewhat extravagant, but her routine consisted solely of driving to the Hamptons. Her first outing resulted in a speeding ticket, since she had no concept of how quickly she was traveling. You couldn’t sense velocity while riding inside it.
Recommending One Album
She would name her own record as the best entry point into electronic music. The album she’d single out is Buchla Concerts 1975, which she considers the one she’d most want to share with a newcomer to the genre.
“It wasn’t a finely recorded album,” she said. “It came from a cassette tape during a live quadraphonic concert, but I’m so grateful that it documented the live [aspect]. What I’m interested in is the live performance. That’s where I came from. I’ve also made a lot of studio albums, but my founding love of electronic music was as a performance instrument.”
Loneliness at the Dawn of Something
She recognized the start of something new when she first got hold of all those instruments and machines. The thrill was hers alone, and she assumed everyone else felt it too. That assumption was her mistake.
This woman took her thrilling device into the world and crashed against a wall. Nobody could identify the noise, nor its source. The aftermath of that thrill was loneliness. She felt frustrated because no one grasped what was going on.
She spoke those words, saying “I had no audience then,” and then went on to say “Now I have an audience. The kids know what’s going on. They have the machines. Nobody had them back then.”.
Teaching Through Performance
The solitude was overcome through teaching, and she developed great patience. She told herself “You’re going to have to be responsible for this gap, and so when people ask a question, take your time, answer it. Doesn’t matter how many times you’ve answered it. Be genuinely empathic with their desire to understand, don’t lash out and say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”, which became her guiding principle.
The teaching persona she developed back then is still with her today. She also made her first album, Seven Waves, a blend of classical and electronic music.
Glasgow and Roswell
This weekend, Ciani makes her Scottish debut, playing her first ever show in the country at Glasgow’s Sonica Festival. The festival has a long history as a meeting place for art and experimental music, and she will be performing alongside other experimental artists from around the world.
She will return to the States by early November to perform at Atomika, a fresh science and music festival taking place in the remote desert near Roswell, New Mexico.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| This weekend | Sonica Festival, Glasgow, Scotland |
| Early November | Atomika, Roswell, New Mexico |
The story of Ciani’s development of the sound logo and the intro score, along with her later comeback through live modular synthesizer shows, offers a clear view into an electronic-music pioneer’s real life. Over many years, she has worked on building technology while also helping audiences learn to understand it.
Source material: “20 Questions With Electronic Pioneer Suzanne Ciani: ‘Now I Have An Audience. The Kids Know What’s Going On’,” Billboard.
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