Suzanne Ciani - Riding the Waves of Emotion

Electricity, three-dimensionality and movement. Transmitted waves and perceptions shared with the machine. These are some of the key words that perfectly define the live sets of Suzanne Ciani with her favourite performance instrument, the Buchla 200E, an evolution of the first instrument she used, born out of her collaboration with synthesizer genius Don Buchla. Ciani has repeatedly stressed how the performance is an expression of the relationship between her and the machine, an experience that happens "here and now" in their presence and ours, rigorously spatialized in quadraphonic sound: "I'm a purist", she reiterates during our interview. The spark is entirely electronic and runs along the coloured cables of the modules, the controls, the pads that Ciani manages live through a "warm" machine, one that "has a brain of its own" and its own "architecture", as she herself puts it. The performer-composer creates live by relating to the machine and transforming signals and notes through time and space: from their live encounter on April 6, 2024 at the Cinema Massimo in Turin - a collaboration between Jazz Is Dead!, Inner Spaces and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema - came a long suite of over 60 minutes in quadraphonic sound, dominated by movement: between sounds, between frequencies, between parameters, between the four monitors placed around the room. Waves. In any technological and metaphorical sense one might interpret them. Before the performance, we spoke with Ciani in the cinema hall. And she led us by the hand into a largely unexplored world. A microcosm of cables and undertows giving shape to hybrid art forms, downstream of an extremely long career, dense with turning points, insights and flights of the soul.

We're thrilled to have the chance to interview you. Let's start from the beginning of your career. During your undergraduate degree at Wellesley College, when you were studying as a classical composer, you discovered the sound of a classical instrument processed by a computer thanks to a professor at MIT, right?

Yes, he was trying to make sounds with the computer.

How did that sound open your mind? Did it kick off a new creative path for you as a composer or performer, or both?

First of all, it made me ask a question: what is it? Where is it found? Where do I find it? That's when I realized there was something new I wanted to know more about, but at the time I couldn't find anything else until I moved to the West Coast, and there I encountered electronic music.

Could you describe the artistic context of Berkeley in the second half of the 1960s, where you developed your pioneering vision?

In 1968, when I was doing my graduate studies (at the University of California, Berkeley), electronic music wasn't taught there, it didn't exist as a subject, so I had to leave the school to find it. I found it first of all at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was a studio open to the public, where they had the instruments: the first Buchla, the 100; the Moog 15; other electronic devices you could play; and a tape recorder. So I would go there and spend time with this equipment. It wasn't a meeting place like many people think, but a private one, where you'd shut yourself in a room with the gear and spend time with the machines. They even let me take an instrument home for the summer, the Moog. But the turning point for me was when I met Don Buchla, whom I had the chance to meet because a friend of mine was his neighbour and took me to his studio. When I walked in, I thought: "Oh my God!". I was overwhelmed! I saw all the modules he had in the studio and thought: "This is where I belong. I have to come back". So when I graduated, I went back to work for him.

Before moving on to your time at Buchla, we were curious to know whether in those years you took part in multidisciplinary and multimedia projects, perhaps something involving moving images (video, film)? This would be before both the soundtrack for Joel Schumacher's "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981), and your long career in the world of advertising.

The friend who introduced me to Buchla was a sculptor, Harold Paris. He had to put on an exhibition in Brussels, Belgium (in June 1970), and he suggested we do a project together. We made a record called "Voices Of Packaged Souls" (1970). He gave me the concept for the record and a list of about 13 ideas - the sound of heat, the sound of cold, the sound of an old man in love, the sound of a falling flower... - so I took these prompts and worked on them at Berkeley's radio station, the public broadcaster KPFA, from midnight to dawn, which was the only time slot they could give me the studio. I used small fragments of sounds I'd made with the Buchla at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, I had some recorded sounds, and I had also processed sounds on the computer at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Artificial Intelligence was in its infancy back then, and there was a lab there where courses were held. One summer I took one with Max Mathews, the father of computer music, and with John Chowning, who became known for his work on frequency modulation (FM) - the discoveries around FM ended up being built into many instruments, like the Yamaha DX7 (keyboard) - so it was Stanford that licensed these technologies to the Japanese, and I was there at that very moment. It was perfect! So I did the project and produced an LP using all these elements, an LP that was reissued a while back by Finders Keepers Records.

Could you tell us about your time at Buchla, where you worked as a solderer while, at the same time, conceiving your own musical instrument there? Imagining it and making it.

We were building the 200 models, which were shipped to CalArts - a new school - and to studios in Norway and other parts of the world. A lot of artists, individual buyers, didn't buy one because it was too expensive an instrument. But I wanted one, so my work was aimed at earning enough to be able to buy one. I had a reason, I was driven by passion and love! So I learned how to earn money, and that's how the advertising work came about: I did commercials and got paid well. I had tried to get a normal job, but I couldn't manage it. I had tried to get hired as a sound engineer, but they didn't want a woman. I even tried working as a waitress, but they thought I was overqualified because of my graduate degree. There weren't many opportunities for women, but electronic music gave me an enormous chance. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was an extraordinary synergistic experience: being in love with an instrument and having the chance to be supported by that very instrument! It's an expensive instrument, younger people always tell me that.

In your interviews you talk about the cost of replacing individual parts when they broke while you were on tour. It's so fascinating that you worked there as a solderer: you know the material side of a piece of musical technology. In the film "Sisters With Transistors" (2020) you describe the machine as "warm", so it really has a lot to do with relationship.

Yes, electricity is part of our lives now, we don't even realize it's there, but when it goes away, we feel our lives become sad and gloomy. At certain moments it's pleasant (for it not to be there), I sit facing the ocean, but in general electricity brings vitality to our lives. And these instruments need electricity.

It's fascinating to think that in those years there were not only electronic musical instruments but also electronic video instruments, experimented with by artists like Steina Vasulka and Laurie Anderson. And there was this idea of customizing your own instruments.

We had a group called E.A.T., Experiments in Art and Technology, do you know it?

Yes, Robert Rauschenberg was there too, right?

Yes, and Frank Oppenheimer, Robert's brother, who was behind the project. We'd meet up between engineers from big companies, like Hewlett-Packard, and artists. I worked with a video artist who had built a prototype of a sound sensitive visual Tv.

The era of electronic media is so fascinating! Electricity is a key, intermediality is a key, interfaces are a key; it was a collaborative context, and then there was also the moment when, as a composer, you needed to spend time individually with your instruments.

Exactly, that's what composers do. If you're composing for acoustic instruments, you have to know those instruments, you have to know their range, their width, their toughest spots. As a composer you bring all that knowledge into a composition that can be performed. I was trained to do that, to know all those aspects, and when I moved on to electronic instruments, my ears were thrilled to hear that range. There's no instrument that can cover the whole range from bottom to top! And the high end is really high, the low end is really low. It's simply a magnificent palette, if you think of it in terms of traditional sound! That was a huge opening up, sound-wise.

That was Mathews' field, Max came out of Bell Labs, but that was pure computer music. My goal, on the other hand, was performance. And the Buchla was unique, because it had been conceived by Don Buchla to be a performance instrument. It was special! The lights give you a lot of information, there are loads of color-coded cables, with two different types of cable. It's truly a communicative instrument: when I play it, I know what's happening inside the machine, there's a feedback system. That's Buchla's concept. These instruments weren't considered "performable". When they added a keyboard - Moog did it - people thought synthesizers were played through the keyboard. But that's not how you play them. It took a long time to understand that, right up to today, when we're going back to considering the potential of these instruments.

In the documentary dedicated to you, "A Life In Waves" (2017), you say something specific about the sound generated by synthesizers: "It's not about the sound, it's about the movement".

It's about the way sound moves. If you think of the sound of an instrument it feels "frozen": it sounds like a flute, it sounds like a violin... You play it on the keyboard and it stays somehow "stuck". But for me, with these instruments, since they're about electricity and voltage control, the way you control sound is through voltage. It's not like a traditional instrument where you have physical limitations, here you have a wide spectrum for control. The sound is always moving and isn't really stuck, it moves, it goes this way, it goes that way, and it moves through space. Tonight, for instance, I'll be playing in quadraphonic sound.

The uniqueness of electronic music also has to do with the concept of "color", which allows you to create a kind of synesthesia and reconnect with our imagination.

Because we're human beings and to understand sound we need to conceptualize, we do it in order to make sense of things. But I don't think of sound in visual terms. I collaborate with the machine and I only think about the relationship with the machine: what the machine can do, what I can do with the machine, what we can do together that will actually work. When you're performing, it's like a choreography: you make movements and you're constantly listening, and if something's wrong, you realize it and you fix it.

You often refer to waves, they're also a kind of symbol.

Yes, because waves have become a shorthand for the universe, all the energy of the galaxy seems to move through waves: the energy system is essentially a wave. We have waves in an audible range, we can hear them and that's extraordinary, but there are also waves (that we can't hear): I'm working on a project with a group of astrophysicists in Tenerife, who discovered the frequency waves of galaxies.

Tell us an anecdote related to the importance of the house in Bolinas overlooking the ocean, which carries weight in your music.

The Buchla is a fantastic instrument for producing the sound of waves. A lot of people think I sampled the waves, but I don't sample. Sometimes while I'm playing my waves in the studio, I can hear the ocean waves in the distance. It's all connected: I hear waves inside and out. Right now, though, I have a problem with the house, because it's rained a lot this year and the cliff is sinking, due to erosion. It's a magnificent place, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep living there...

The presence of the sea as a state of mind.

That's exactly it! It's a great palette, a free and safe space to create. A wonderful place.

What do you remember about the time when “History Of My Heart” (1989) came out? It's the first album where so many other instruments also appear. How do you look back today on that period of your artistic life?

My first album was pure electronic music (“Voices Of Packaged Souls”). Without really noticing it, without any concept or goal, I gradually started adding acoustic instruments. The first album where that happened was “The Velocity Of Love” (1986), on which I played piano, and it was very well received. So I made an album with just piano (“Neverland”, 1988). “History Of My Heart” came about naturally - I don't know why I'd started adding other instruments, but that process led directly to “Dream Sweet” (1994), which is essentially acoustic and which I made with an orchestra recorded in Russia.

“Seven Waves” (1982) is a milestone for our site, and for music as a whole. How and how much are you still connected to that album today? What role has it played in your career?

It was really my first album, and when I made it I believed it would also be my last, because I thought: “This is my statement, I've made it, and now I'm done”. I had no idea how much life still lay ahead, and how many things could still happen… Recently I did two concerts where I incorporated some of the preparatory material from the record - when I was sorting through my archive, I found the original recordings, the actual multitrack sessions - and I transferred them to digital, so I had access to the individual sounds on the album. I did a concert where I used them. I'm a purist, so I don't like using pre-recorded sounds live, but they were beautiful! I won't do it at tonight's concert, but I'd like to bring it back because it's like two worlds colliding. (In the beginning) I would have liked to record the early Buchla in quadraphonic sound, but it never happened because we didn't have the tape recorder, the four channels, the record deal. By the time I got the chance to record an album, I had moved past the Buchla phase, I was at a new stage, and I recorded it as a studio album. Now that I play part of “Seven Waves” with the Buchla it works beautifully, it's surprising! And the audience loves this blend, because, yes, they love the Buchla but “Seven Waves” is very moving, so when you combine the two the result is really powerful. I'm sorry I won't be doing it tonight.

You'll come back to do it!

Of course!

Has your approach to technological experimentation changed over the years? Do you still customize the instruments you use? 

Technology is always the same, in the sense that (basically) it's constantly changing and you always have to keep up with it. It's like having a car. Nowadays it's essentially all done by computers. Still, it demands constant attention and it's constantly changing.

What do you think women, since the 1960s, have been able to express in music through electronic devices? Through music and electronic media.

I think that in the end we came to understand that women were particularly drawn to electronics because, as Laurie Spiegel so brilliantly explains in “Sisters With Transistors”, they didn't fit in and didn't belong to other contexts. And so they could do things and have complete control over what they were doing. That was an extremely appealing thing for women artists. Back then there was no communication, we didn't know of each other's existence, until that film came out! We discovered our own history. It's shocking to realize how much ground had been covered without our knowing it. All over the world there were women electronic musicians: in Denmark, in Iceland, everywhere! In so many different places, women were working with these instruments, all of which were different: they worked with the idea of exploring an intimate relationship with this kind of technology.

Instruments that could be “customized”.

Of course, they all customized them! And we're all different! That's the nature of this technology. You can buy instruments with preset settings to get started, but since you can customize them, there's no limit to what you can do. If I need something, because this is a collaborative art form after all, I turn to engineers to implement the tools. You find the right person - it's not easy! I found mine - the person who does exactly what you need.

Fantastic! Thinking about the world of video, it also brings to mind what Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe did with the design of the Abe/Paik Video Synthesizer.

Yes! With Charlotte Moorman playing cello, it was magnificent…

What advice would you give to someone young who's approaching the world of synthesizers?

I'd tell them to spend time with the instruments they have available. Sometimes people get stuck and keep buying modules, which is fine, but you need to spend time with the modules you already have. It doesn't matter where you start, what matters is knowing what you have in depth, exploring it. It's not an obvious thing. So (I'd say) know your instruments and spend time with them.

Getting to know each other too, right? Because playing those instruments is a relational process.

Absolutely!

Imagine running into a childhood friend you haven't seen in a long time, who doesn't know you're a musician. Which song would you play them to introduce them to your music?

I have two identities: one is the romantic-neoclassical one, the other is the performative Buchla one. I think "Seven Waves" could be a great introduction to those worlds. "The Velocity Of Love" could also be a great starting point, because it's electronic and romantic. I played in Mirabella for my family (my hometown), I did a piano concert and they loved it, it was wonderful. Now, even though they don't particularly appreciate electronic music, they feel obliged to come to the electronic concert too, so let's see what happens!

Ride the wave of great music

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