Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the founding members of California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for many years. Subotnick has worked extensively with interactive electronics and multi-media, co-founding the San Francisco Tape Music Center with Pauline Oliveros and Ramon Sender, often collaborating with his wife Joan La Barbara. Subotnick is one of the pioneers in the development of electronic music and multi-media performance and an innovator in works involving instruments and other media, including interactive computer music systems. Most of his music calls for a computer part, or live electronic processing; his oeuvre utilizes many of the important technological breakthroughs in the history of the genre. Early career Subotnick was born in Los Angeles, California, and graduated from the University of Denver. In the early 1960s, Subotnick taught at Mills College and with Ramon Sender, he co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center. During this period he also collaborated with Anna Halprin on two works (the 3 legged stool and Parades and Changes) and acted as music director of the Actors Workshop. In 1966 Subotnick was instrumental in getting a Rockefeller Grant to join the Tape Center with the Mills Chamber Players (a chamber group at Mills College with performers Nate Rubin (violin); Bonnie Hampton (cello); Naomi Sparrow (piano) and Subotnick on 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 Actor's Workshop to become the first music director of the Lincoln Center Rep Company in the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center.