164 Log 231007_16 Interview
Ramón Sender and Judy Levy–Sender

October 7^th 2023, via ZOOM
October 16^th 2023
3922 23^rd Street, San Francisco

Ramón Sender (*1934 Spain) is a composer of electronic music, well-known writer of fiction and memoirs, communal archivist and artist and has been working as Clown Zero. He studied piano with George Copeland and composition with Elliott Carter, Harold Shapiro in New York, with Robert Erickson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at Mills College with Darius Milhaud. Together with Morton Subotnick he founded The San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1962.
Judy Levy-Sender worked as a SFUSD teacher of ESL-Bilingual education to junior and senior high schooler, she is a ‘wrartist’ drawing and writing lines ‘whimsical and otherwise’.
Ramon Sender is one of the founding members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (SFTMC), alongside Pauline Oliveros and Morton Subotnick. The Sonic Series, a precursor to the SFTMC, was conceived as a presentation format for Robert Erickson’s composition class. These were “bring your own speaker” concerts. According to Sender, listening to loudspeakers only, something would have been missing, which is why the Sonic Series were multimedia events. In the SFTMC, tape music was experimentally staged.

Interview with Ramón Sender and Judy Levy–Sender. pdf

Abstract
The interview with Ramón Sender and Judy Levy–Sender offers a practice-oriented and scene-historical perspective on the emergence and working methods of the San Francisco Tape Music Center (SFTMC). Sender describes the SFTMC as an open environment for production and performance that arose from improvised technical solutions and collective collaboration.

At the center is an experimental engagement with tape technology, particularly delay, looping, and feedback. Sender emphasizes that these techniques were not used in the sense of European studio aesthetics of montage or precise editing, but rather as means of generating openness, unpredictability, and live interaction. Composition is understood as a process that unfolds in the moment of listening, responding, and acting together – closely aligned with John Cage’s understanding of experimental music and Pauline Oliveros’s emphasis on attention and Deep Listening.

The interview also makes clear that the pronounced DIY-character of the SFTMC resulted from material necessity: limited resources and self-built studios. Visual elements, lighting work, and interdisciplinary collaborations were understood early on as integral components of performance practice, expanding conventional notions of concert and sonic space.

Finally, the conversation addresses the fragility of archival transmission. Materials, notes, and recordings are scattered, incomplete, or preserved only in personal collections. The legacy of the SFTMC is not a closed historical chapter, but an experimental music practice defined by openness and processuality – whose significance lies precisely in its resistance to institutionalization.