Suzanne Ciani

Certain paths are special from the very first step. They are the routes that always, inevitably, lead to a new scenario, an utterly unusual panorama in which one can finally glimpse unexplored spaces, entire prairies to leave for future generations. The human and artistic journey of Suzanne Ciani has marked out new frontiers in the field of electronic music. Without her experience and her courage, we might not be able to talk today about new age and many other things tied to the wonderful world of machines. Because Ciani knew how to explore, and never gave up, not even when the world was spinning backwards and no one dared believe in her project. Her strong character and the presence of a husband ready to support her at every turn were the secret weapons with which she managed to win countless battles over the years.

It's 1969, and Suzanne is a student at Berkeley University; having graduated from Wellesley College, she intends to complete her studies in composition. The Master's Degree in Music Composition will become for her not only the decisive academic step, but the opportunity of a lifetime. During her courses, Suzanne meets Don Buchla. For the moment, luck is on her side: her boyfriend at the time works right next to Buchla's studio. Drawn to the legendary inventor's creations, Ciani wastes no time in befriending him, to the point of deciding to work for him once she finishes her studies. These are the years of women's liberation, of youth movements, years in which everything seems possible, including the overturning of certain strange conventions, such as the ingrained suspicion toward a woman at the controls. Indeed, this very prejudice will be one of the last to fall. And only many years later will Ciani manage to establish herself in that world crowded with men alone. A world unto itself, a microcosm difficult to break into. She was among the first to believe blindly in the redemptive power of the wonderful Buchla 200. From the very start, the latter would become the "natural" extension of her body, the most beloved tool with which to spread her music, her emotions. Suzanne assembles, disassembles, reassembles: synthesizers soon take on a central place in her daily life. She builds one of her own, starting from her mentor's designs, and names it, fittingly, Buchla, in his honor.

In those years, Ciani is essentially a private researcher. She spends most of her days among wires and power outlets, keys to modify and particular modules to assemble. At that time, the only woman of her generation to be so passionate about machines is Laurie Spiegel, who would venture into something slightly different, merging the computer with the whole structure. Yet their paths intertwine, like the many circuits wrapped around the instrument. Like Ciani, Spiegel too would create sonic experiences absolutely unique in the electronic firmament. While the cosmic couriers would turn their knobs imagining themselves aboard a spacecraft of Kubrickian design, Ciani and Spiegel — the latter in her manifesto "The Expanding Universe" — would take paths substantially different from those of the German pioneers. And it would be Ciani above all, with her countless inventions — like the famous one of electronically recreating the sound of a Coca-Cola can being opened — who would open up new possibilities in the field of electronic music.

Suzanne believes in it. She knows better than anyone the potential of her machine, and of synths in general. During this period, she founds the Electronic Center for New Music with the noble intent of promoting new musical technologies, but the venture fails almost instantly. There are still no sponsors willing to believe in a woman working with an instrument still considered alien and hardly accessible to the general public. Only four decades later would the prestigious Red Bull believe in her, and in the whole associated scene, creating the Red Bull Music Academy, of which Ciani becomes a permanent member, as well as an absolute beacon for the experimental electronic music field.

Beyond the events that carried the New York musician to the top of the world—scoring commercials for American Express, General Electric, the aforementioned Coca Cola and Atari, as well as winning a Golden Globe and earning five Grammy nominations—it's essential to dwell on the album that will forever stand as her absolute masterpiece: "Seven Waves". If we consider the extremely rare "Voices Of Packaged Souls" as sitting outside her proper discography—de facto an experiment released to spark enthusiasm for the potential of the Buchla, made up of thirteen voices designed to recreate sounds that had until then been impossible to reproduce artificially—then we can say, without fear of error, that "Seven Waves" is Ciani's true debut. A work as delicate as it is complex, as captivating as it is seminal to the evolution of electronic music in the blessed '80s. A record that draws its lifeblood from the sound of ocean waves. After all, the Pacific would remain the primary source of inspiration throughout Ciani's entire career. From her home in Bolinas, California, she can watch the waves break on the shore. It's from here that the composer of Italian descent shapes her own movements. Nature, then, is the perfect calling. And the sound of water is the symphony waiting to be synthesized.

Seven waves, precisely. Seven, like the wonders of the world. Seven streams of infinite whiteness, with the softest piano variations, notes that seem to come from the inside of a seashell rather than a cold box crammed with strange machinery. And it's a quick sample of ocean waves that opens the first track: "Birth Of Venus". Every track title is marked as a "wave", and the "first wave" carries with it the birth of a Venus shaped like a mermaid. A watery goddess who commands the ocean and its supreme motion with her elegance. It's a flicker of micro modular variations, building to a terribly sublime crescendo, mesmerizing at every stage. Her love of Bach is fittingly translated into circuitry, and the result is truly astonishing. Just as astonishing is the minimal imprint of the following "Sirens", which soothes with its endless melodic expanse. A movement that reveals how close Ciani's trajectory ran to that of her friend Philip Glass. It's a crystalline sound, as limpid as the waters of Honolulu, that pervades "Seven Waves". A constant wave of supreme beauty and endless wonder.

Between one pristine spray of water and the next, between one exquisite melody and another, we arrive at the album's centerpiece, its highest peak: "Water Lullaby". A surreal piano figure, as if plucked from a parallel world where everything flows freely, gravity momentarily set aside by the sea's gentle rocking. Emotional waves that expand, vanish for a moment, and then reappear, rising from a horizon that no longer feels distant. It's nectar for the soul, what Ciani broadcast from her private studio. The new age explosion just around the corner would perhaps never reach such wonder again. Japan, meanwhile, was the first to embrace the redemptive power of Ciani's music; it's no coincidence that "Seven Waves" was initially released only for the Japanese market through Victor, while it was the experimental label Finnadar, run by the ultra-experimental Turkish composer İlhan Mimaroğlu, that would later launch it properly to the rest of the world.

If George Deuter opened the season of journeys to India and of Western machinery placed in service of Eastern spirituality, Ciani paradoxically went even further than the German innovator, while still staying within his same walls, embracing nature from the right angle, from its softest side. Epigones would follow, along with precious collaborations such as the 2016 one with young Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and entire series of records inspired by Ciani's music. But no wave would ever break on the shore with quite the same delicacy, with the same unattainable splendor.

Ride the wave of great music

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23/09/2018