Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick
Adjunct Professor, Composition
- Website: www.mortonsubotnick.com
Morton Subotnick is one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. The work that brought Subotnick celebrity was Silver Apples of the Moon [1966–67], commissioned by Nonesuch Records, marking the first time an original large-scale composition had been created specifically for the disc medium—a conscious acknowledgment that the home stereo system constituted a present-day form of chamber music. It has become a modern classic and was recently entered into the National Register of Recorded Works at the Library of Congress. Only 300 recordings throughout the entire history of recorded music have been chosen.
In the early 1960s, Subotnick taught at Mills College, and, with Ramon Sender, co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center. During this period he collaborated with Anna Halprin in two works (the 3 legged stool and Parades and Changes) and was music director of the Actors Workshop. It was also during this period that Subotnick worked with Don Buchla on what may have been the first analog synthesizer (now at the Library of Congress).
In 1966 Subotnick was instrumental in getting a Rockefeller Grant to join the Tape Center with the Mills Chamber Players (at Mills College with performers Nate Rubin, violin; Bonnie Hampton, cello; Naomi Sparrow, piano; and Subotnick, clarinet). The grant required that the Tape Center relocate to a host institution that became Mills College. Subotnick, however, did not stay with the move, but went to New York with the Actors Workshop to become the first music director of the Lincoln Center Rep Company in the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. He became an artist in residence at the newly formed Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. The School of the Arts provided him with a studio and a Buchla Synthesizer. During this period he helped develop and became artistic director of the Electric Circus and the Electric Ear. This was also the time of the creation of Silver Apples of the Moon, The Wild Bull and Touch.
In 1969 Subotnick was invited to be part of a team of artists to move to Los Angeles to plan a new school of the arts. With Mel Powell as dean and a team of four other pairs of artists, Subotnick, as associate dean, carved out a new path of music education and created the now famous California Institute of the Arts. Subotnick remained associate dean of the music school for four years and then, resigning as associate dean, became the head of the composition program where, a few years later, he created a new media program that introduced interactive technology and multimedia into the curriculum.
Subotnick is now pioneering works to offer musical creative tools to young children. He is the author of a series of CD-ROMs for children and a children's website and is developing a program for classroom and after-school programs that will soon become available internationally.
Among Subotnick's awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Rockefeller Grants, two Meet the Composers, American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award, Brandies Award, Deutcher Akademisher Austauschdienst Kunsterprogramm (DAAD), Composer in Residence in Berlin, Lifetime Achievement Award (SEAMUS at Dartmouth), ASCAP: John Cage Award, ACO: Lifetime Achievement, and Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of the Arts.
Morton Subotnick tours extensively throughout the United States and Europe as a lecturer and composer/performer.
