Kategorie: Interviews

Tomomi Adachi
François Bayle
David Bernstein
Nicolas Debade
James Fei
Beatriz Ferreyra
Toshie Kakinuma
Jonathan Prager
Simone Rist
Ramón Sender
Ian Stonehouse on Lily Greenham
Trevor Wishart

247 Log 250903
In Conversation with Tomomi Adachi

29 September, 2025, Kanazawa

Tomomi Adachi
born in 1972 in Kanagawa is a Japanese composer, performer, voice artist, and instrument builder known for his experimental approach to sound and performance. His work spans extended vocal techniques, sound poetry, live electronics, and the construction of original electronic instruments and sensor-based devices. Adachi frequently collaborates across disciplines, creating works that merge music, technology, theatre, and media art. He has performed internationally, composed for ensembles and multimedia settings, and served as a guest artist and lecturer in Europe, the United States, and Asia. His practice often explores the intersections of notation and improvisation, body and technology, and voice and electronics.

Abstract
This text proposes a critical re-reading of Japanese sound poetry through the intersecting lenses of voice, tape, and technological mediation. Drawing on archival research, historical reconstruction, and an extended interview with Tomomi Adachi, the text traces episodic constellations of practice – from prewar futurist phonetic experiments associated with MAVO, through postwar figures such as Suzuki Shiroyasu and Niikuni Seiichi, to Fluxus-related sound and media art.
Central to the argument is the role of recording technologies – wire recorders, magnetic tape, radio studios, and later digital systems – not merely as tools of documentation but as epistemic frameworks that reshape vocal articulation, authorship, and performativity. The essay situates Japanese sound poetry at the threshold between literature, music, and performance, emphasizing non-semantic vocality, corporeal articulation, and the instability of notation. The text frames Adachi’s contemporary practices like live electronics, DIY instruments, 3D textual objects, and AI-generated voices, as a continuation of these concerns, in which voice emerges as both bodily event and technological artifact. Rather than positioning Japanese sound poetry as a derivative counterpart to European models, the essay argues for its constitutive role within a transnational history of vocal and media-based experimentation.

In Conversation with Tomomi Adachi.pdf

Adachi Tomomi’s personal website [accessed 13.12.2025]

238 Log 250807 In Conversation with Toshie Kakinuma:
Jōji Yuasa, Takemitsu Tōru and Japanese Musique Concrète

September 16, 2025, Kunitachi Library, Tokyo

Toshie Kakinuma
Born in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan, Toshie Kakinuma is a distinguished musicologist, critic, and translator whose work centers on experimental and vocal music of the 20th and 21st centuries. She received her Bachelor of Music in Musicology from Kunitachi College of Music in 1977 and went on to complete her Master’s degree at Ochanomizu University in 1981. Pursuing further research abroad, she earned her Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego in 1989, where her doctoral studies focused on the American composer and instrument maker Harry Partch. Upon her return to Japan, Kakinuma held teaching positions at several institutions, including Meiji Gakuin University and Takushoku University, before joining the faculty of Kyoto City University of Arts as Professor of Musicology. At Kyoto, she also served as Director of the Archival Research Center, contributing significantly to the development of resources on contemporary Japanese and American music. Her scholarly interests encompass American experimentalism, modern Japanese composition, organology, and the intersections of sound, language, and the body. Kakinuma is the author of American Experimental Music as Ethnic Music (Film Art Sha, 2005) and The Birth of “Atonality” (Ongaku-no-tomo Sha, 2020, The 30th Yoshida Hidekazu Prize), has written extensively on figures such as Yūji Yuasa, Tōru Takemitsu, and Lou Harrison. In addition to her critical and scholarly output, she has produced influential Japanese translations of key 20th-century music texts, including John Cage’s Silence and Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise. When she wrote her essay “Yūji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language” (Ongaku Geijutsu, October 1984), Kakinuma was an emerging voice in Japan’s critical and academic circles, closely engaged with the evolving aesthetics of postwar vocal and electronic music.

In conversation with Toshie Kakinuma.pdf

Abstract
The conversation with musicologist and critic Toshie Kakinuma focuses on the vocal and electroacoustic works of Jōji Yuasa and Tōru Takemitsu, which she interprets as distinct Japanese articulations of musique concrète. Kakinuma situates these practices in dialogue with the European avant-garde – particularly Pierre Schaeffer, Luciano Berio, and Karlheinz Stockhausen – while emphasizing a critical divergence. Whereas Schaeffer’s concept of the objet sonore relies on analytical reduction and the suspension of linguistic meaning, Yuasa and Takemitsu pursue an approach that repositions the voice in a pre-semantic, corporeal register. The interview further addresses Kakinuma’s research on Takemitsu’s Vocal Trilogy, characterizing his engagement with musique concrète as explicitly anti-analytical. In contrast to European phonematic decomposition, Takemitsu conceives the voice as a bodily, everyday, and pre-aesthetic event, foregrounding experiential immediacy over structural abstraction.

Toshie Kakinuma:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part I
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part II
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part III

238 Log 250807 Toshie Kakinuma:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part I

Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part I

Abstract Part I
Toshie Kakinuma’s essay “Jōji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language” analyzes the Japanese composer Jōji Yuasa’s 1969 tape piece Voices Coming as a radical experiment in the relationship between sound, language, and communication. Kakinuma situates the work within the postwar avant-garde tradition of deconstructing words and meaning – alongside Boulez, Berio, and Stockhausen – yet argues that Yuasa’s approach is distinct in its phenomenological rigor. Rather than mixing speech with electronic or musical sounds, Yuasa confines himself to unaltered recorded voices, exposing the hidden musicality of ordinary speech. By isolating interjections, conjunctions, and conversational fillers from everyday dialogue, Voices Coming strips language of semantic function and re-presents it as temporal and formal sound material. Through this process, habitual speech becomes defamiliarized: language, usually transparent and functional, regains perceptible form and duration. Kakinuma interprets this transformation as a double act – emptying everyday meaning while enriching non-everyday significance – and as a key moment in Yuasa’s broader search for a synthesis of poetic and musical temporality. The essay concludes that Yuasa’s work transcends the conventional boundaries of `music` and `vocal composition`, revealing how the human voice mediates between sound, meaning, and the possibility (or impossibility) of communication.

Toshie Kakinuma
Born in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan, Toshie Kakinuma is a distinguished musicologist, critic, and translator whose work centers on experimental and vocal music of the 20th and 21st centuries. She received her Bachelor of Music in Musicology from Kunitachi College of Music in 1977 and went on to complete her Master’s degree at Ochanomizu University in 1981. Pursuing further research abroad, she earned her Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego in 1989, where her doctoral studies focused on the American composer and instrument maker Harry Partch. Upon her return to Japan, Kakinuma held teaching positions at several institutions, including Meiji Gakuin University and Takushoku University, before joining the faculty of Kyoto City University of Arts as Professor of Musicology. At Kyoto, she also served as Director of the Archival Research Center, contributing significantly to the development of resources on contemporary Japanese and American music. Her scholarly interests encompass American experimentalism, modern Japanese composition, organology, and the intersections of sound, language, and the body. Kakinuma is the author of American Experimental Music as Ethnic Music (Film Art Sha, 2005) and The Birth of “Atonality” (Ongaku-no-tomo Sha, 2020, The 30th Yoshida Hidekazu Prize), has written extensively on figures such as Yūji Yuasa, Tōru Takemitsu, and Lou Harrison. In addition to her critical and scholarly output, she has produced influential Japanese translations of key 20th-century music texts, including John Cage’s Silence and Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise. When she wrote her essay “Yūji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language” (Ongaku Geijutsu, October 1984), Kakinuma was an emerging voice in Japan’s critical and academic circles, closely engaged with the evolving aesthetics of postwar vocal and electronic music.

Jōji Yuasa (1929–2024)
was a Japanese composer and one of the pioneers of postwar Japanese avant-garde music. He studied composition in Japan and Europe and was influenced by Western modernist trends (like Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen). He was known for his experimental, combining Western avant-garde techniques with Japanese aesthetics. He worked extensively with serialism, electronic music, and open-form composition.
Yuasa’s Work with the voice was an exploration of vocal timbre. He was interested in the human voice as a sound source, not just as a carrier of text or traditional melody. He often treated the voice like an instrument, exploring extended techniques (whispering, shouting, overtones, glissandi), integrating it in Musique Concrète and Electronic Music, experimenting with tape manipulation of the voice, cutting, layering, and processing vocal sounds to create textures and sonic landscapes. The voice became material for composition, abstracted from semantic content. He composed pieces for solo voice, mixed ensembles, and electronic setups. Vocal performances were often experimental, and performers had to explore unconventional sounds and interactions with electronics or tape. Like Tōru Takemitsu, Yuasa was interested in the “sound itself”, focusing on timbre, gesture, and expressive potential of the voice. The voice could evoke natural or bodily phenomena or serve as an abstract sonic object in avant-garde composition.
Jōji Yuasa is a central figure in postwar Japanese experimental music who treated the human voice as an instrument and sonic material, exploring both acoustic possibilities and electronic transformation. His work aligns with broader trends in Japanese musique concrète, emphasizing sound over meaning.

further reading:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part II
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part III

238 Log 250807 Toshie Kakinuma:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part II

Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part II

Abstract Part II
Part II explores how Yuasa’s groundbreaking composition Voices Coming redefined the relationship between voice, sound, and meaning.
Yuasa used recorded human speech rather than newly produced sounds, emphasizing how voice inherently carries meaning. Through fragmentation and editing, he suspended meaning and broke down normal communication, turning language itself into musical material. Dismantling question–answer structures and expose the emptiness of habitual speech. Kakinuma compares Yuasa’s approach to Luciano Berio and John Cage, highlighting Yuasa’s distinct focus on the phenomenology of language. Over time, Yuasa expanded these ideas into live and instrumental works, maintaining speech-like rhythms even without actual words. The essay concludes that Voices Coming forms the philosophical and artistic foundation of Yuasa’s career, revealing how fragile and yet vital communication is in the modern world.

Toshie Kakinuma
Born in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan, Toshie Kakinuma is a distinguished musicologist, critic, and translator whose work centers on experimental and vocal music of the 20th and 21st centuries. She received her Bachelor of Music in Musicology from Kunitachi College of Music in 1977 and went on to complete her Master’s degree at Ochanomizu University in 1981. Pursuing further research abroad, she earned her Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego in 1989, where her doctoral studies focused on the American composer and instrument maker Harry Partch. Upon her return to Japan, Kakinuma held teaching positions at several institutions, including Meiji Gakuin University and Takushoku University, before joining the faculty of Kyoto City University of Arts as Professor of Musicology. At Kyoto, she also served as Director of the Archival Research Center, contributing significantly to the development of resources on contemporary Japanese and American music. Her scholarly interests encompass American experimentalism, modern Japanese composition, organology, and the intersections of sound, language, and the body. Kakinuma is the author of American Experimental Music as Ethnic Music (Film Art Sha, 2005) and The Birth of “Atonality” (Ongaku-no-tomo Sha, 2020, The 30th Yoshida Hidekazu Prize), has written extensively on figures such as Yūji Yuasa, Tōru Takemitsu, and Lou Harrison. In addition to her critical and scholarly output, she has produced influential Japanese translations of key 20th-century music texts, including John Cage’s Silence and Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise. When she wrote her essay “Yūji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language” (Ongaku Geijutsu, October 1984), Kakinuma was an emerging voice in Japan’s critical and academic circles, closely engaged with the evolving aesthetics of postwar vocal and electronic music.

Jōji Yuasa (1929–2024)
was a Japanese composer and one of the pioneers of postwar Japanese avant-garde music. He studied composition in Japan and Europe and was influenced by Western modernist trends (like Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen). He was known for his experimental, combining Western avant-garde techniques with Japanese aesthetics. He worked extensively with serialism, electronic music, and open-form composition.
Yuasa’s Work with the voice was an exploration of vocal timbre. He was interested in the human voice as a sound source, not just as a carrier of text or traditional melody. He often treated the voice like an instrument, exploring extended techniques (whispering, shouting, overtones, glissandi), integrating it in Musique Concrète and Electronic Music, experimenting with tape manipulation of the voice, cutting, layering, and processing vocal sounds to create textures and sonic landscapes. The voice became material for composition, abstracted from semantic content. He composed pieces for solo voice, mixed ensembles, and electronic setups. Vocal performances were often experimental, and performers had to explore unconventional sounds and interactions with electronics or tape. Like Tōru Takemitsu, Yuasa was interested in the “sound itself”, focusing on timbre, gesture, and expressive potential of the voice. The voice could evoke natural or bodily phenomena or serve as an abstract sonic object in avant-garde composition.
Jōji Yuasa is a central figure in postwar Japanese experimental music who treated the human voice as an instrument and sonic material, exploring both acoustic possibilities and electronic transformation. His work aligns with broader trends in Japanese musique concrète, emphasizing sound over meaning.

further reading:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part I
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part III

238 Log 250807 Toshie Kakinuma:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part III

Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part III

Abstract Part III
The final part of Toshie Kakinuma’s “Yūji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language” examines Yuasa’s later vocal works – Projection on Bashō’s Haiku (1974), Projection on Onomatopoeia (1979), and Etude for “The” (1983). Kakinuma shows how Yuasa’s exploration of sound and meaning evolves into a deep engagement with the Japanese language itself: its phonetic energy, gestural character, and cultural resonance. Through these works, Yuasa transforms language into a field of play between voice and self, communication and noncommunication. His music thus reveals the voice as an apparatus mediating between individuality, collectivity, and the poetic essence of Japanese sound.

Toshie Kakinuma
Born in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan, Toshie Kakinuma is a distinguished musicologist, critic, and translator whose work centers on experimental and vocal music of the 20th and 21st centuries. She received her Bachelor of Music in Musicology from Kunitachi College of Music in 1977 and went on to complete her Master’s degree at Ochanomizu University in 1981. Pursuing further research abroad, she earned her Ph.D. in Music from the University of California, San Diego in 1989, where her doctoral studies focused on the American composer and instrument maker Harry Partch. Upon her return to Japan, Kakinuma held teaching positions at several institutions, including Meiji Gakuin University and Takushoku University, before joining the faculty of Kyoto City University of Arts as Professor of Musicology. At Kyoto, she also served as Director of the Archival Research Center, contributing significantly to the development of resources on contemporary Japanese and American music. Her scholarly interests encompass American experimentalism, modern Japanese composition, organology, and the intersections of sound, language, and the body. Kakinuma is the author of American Experimental Music as Ethnic Music (Film Art Sha, 2005) and The Birth of “Atonality” (Ongaku-no-tomo Sha, 2020, The 30th Yoshida Hidekazu Prize), has written extensively on figures such as Yūji Yuasa, Tōru Takemitsu, and Lou Harrison. In addition to her critical and scholarly output, she has produced influential Japanese translations of key 20th-century music texts, including John Cage’s Silence and Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise. When she wrote her essay “Yūji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language” (Ongaku Geijutsu, October 1984), Kakinuma was an emerging voice in Japan’s critical and academic circles, closely engaged with the evolving aesthetics of postwar vocal and electronic music.

Jōji Yuasa (1929–2024)
was a Japanese composer and one of the pioneers of postwar Japanese avant-garde music. He studied composition in Japan and Europe and was influenced by Western modernist trends (like Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen). He was known for his experimental, combining Western avant-garde techniques with Japanese aesthetics. He worked extensively with serialism, electronic music, and open-form composition.
Yuasa’s Work with the voice was an exploration of vocal timbre. He was interested in the human voice as a sound source, not just as a carrier of text or traditional melody. He often treated the voice like an instrument, exploring extended techniques (whispering, shouting, overtones, glissandi), integrating it in Musique Concrète and Electronic Music, experimenting with tape manipulation of the voice, cutting, layering, and processing vocal sounds to create textures and sonic landscapes. The voice became material for composition, abstracted from semantic content. He composed pieces for solo voice, mixed ensembles, and electronic setups. Vocal performances were often experimental, and performers had to explore unconventional sounds and interactions with electronics or tape. Like Tōru Takemitsu, Yuasa was interested in the “sound itself”, focusing on timbre, gesture, and expressive potential of the voice. The voice could evoke natural or bodily phenomena or serve as an abstract sonic object in avant-garde composition.
Jōji Yuasa is a central figure in postwar Japanese experimental music who treated the human voice as an instrument and sonic material, exploring both acoustic possibilities and electronic transformation. His work aligns with broader trends in Japanese musique concrète, emphasizing sound over meaning.

further reading:
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part I
Joji Yuasa and the Apparatus Called Language_Part II

222 Log In Conversation with Ian Stonehouse on Lily Greenham: Stranger in a Strange Land – Lingual music, Radiophonic Art, voice performance and conceptual art

Ian Stonehouse, British artist, educator, and researcher and experimental Music Archivist and former Head of the Electronic Music Studios (2004–2017) at the Department of Music, Goldsmiths, University of London, where he has taught since 1999. Trained in Fine Art at the University of Wolverhampton, he previously worked at London Electronic Arts (later the Lux Centre), collaborating with artists including Jane & Louise Wilson and Gillian Wearing. Since 2004, he has directed the EMS, focusing on electroacoustic composition, sound design, and media arts.

In Conversation with Ian Stonhouse.pdf

Abstract
This conversation with Ian Stonehouse (Head of EMS, Goldsmiths) explores the legacy of Lily Greenham (1924–2001), a pioneering sound poet, composer, and visual artist. It focuses on her invention of lingual music – a voice-based sound art form – and her collaborations with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, notably the award-winning piece Relativity (1974). Stonehouse highlights Greenham’s multilingual performances, her technical mastery of tape editing, and her later shift toward electroacoustic composition in works such as Polar Polaris and Borges. The discussion also addresses her wide network of collaborators, challenges in archival preservation, and her lasting influence as an interdisciplinary artist who fused poetry, performance, and studio innovation.

More informations:
Ian Stonehouse’ article about Greenham on Wikipedia:
Lily_Greenham (Wikipedia) [accessed 29.12.2025]
Lily Greenham Archive [accessed 29.12.2025]
Badischer Kunstverein: Lily Greenham: Art of Living [accessed 29.12.2025]
Biography Ian Stonehouse [accessed 29.7.2025]

196 Log 241001 Interview Trevor Wishart – Continuous Transformations of Sounds_not vocal in a vocal way

Interview with Trevor Wishart, York, October 13, 2024

Trevor Wishart (*1946, Leeds) is a British composer whose work has fundamentally expanded the concept of music through an exploration of sound, transformation, and the human voice. Trained in mathematics and music, Wishart became a leading figure in electroacoustic composition, developing a distinctive approach he termed sonic art – the organization of any sound material within a musical framework. Wishart has devoted much of his career to exploring the human voice as a source of musical material, using technology to transform and extend its expressive possibilities. Central to his practice is the idea of transformation: the continuous evolution of one sound into another, whether between speech and song, voice and environment, or human and machine. His music is often noted for its combination of technical innovation, political engagement, and imaginative sound design, establishing him as a central figure in contemporary electroacoustic composition.
From his early analogue works such as Machine and Red Bird to later computer-based compositions like Vox 5 and Encounters in the Republic of Heaven, Wishart has created immersive “oral images” that blur the boundary between the real and the imaginary. His innovative use of vocal techniques, spectral morphing, and spatialized sound has made him a pioneer of acousmatic and electroacoustic art. Beyond composition, Wishart’s writings – including On Sonic Art and Audible Design – have deeply influenced contemporary sound theory, redefining how we hear and think about sound as music.

In Conversation with Trevor Wishart.pdf

Abstract
The interview with the composer and theorist Trevor Wishart unfolds a practice- and perception-oriented reflection on electronic music, voice, and sound shaping that deliberately distances itself from work-centered, notation-based, and technologically deterministic models. Wishart situates his artistic practice within the framework of his theory of sonic art, in which music is understood as the organization of sound in perceptual time. At the center are sonic transformations that cannot be reduced to discrete pitches, symbolic structures, or fixed categories.
Particular attention is given to the voice, which Wishart understands as a paradigmatic model of continuous sonic change. Electronic technologies appear as tools for extending human perceptual and creative capacities. The interview makes clear that Wishart’s compositional thinking is shaped by a close interrelation of body, imagination, and technology. Moreover, Wishart reflects on musique concrète and its concept of écoute réduite. Rather than advocating an abstraction from the causes of sound, he argues for a mode of perception that incorporates the causal, energetic, and bodily dimensions of sound: “creating sounds that are ‘not vocal in a vocal way.’”

Trevor Wishart`s personal website
Borthwick Catalogue_Trevor Wishart Archive

164 Log 231017
Interview with James Fei

October 17th, 2023, Mills College/Northeastern

James Fei (*1974, Taiwan) is an electronic music composer, saxophonist, and clarinet player. He studied and worked with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. He has been an Assistant Professor at Mills since 2006. His recordings are released on Leo Records and Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI).

Interview with James Fei.pdf

Abstract
The interview with the composer and electronic musician James Fei offers a practice-oriented and institutionally historical perspective on the experimental music tradition at Mills College and its connection to the legacy of the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Fei describes Mills less as an academic institution in the classical sense than as an open space of experience in which composition, improvisation, electronic media, and interdisciplinary practice continuously intersect, oriented toward John Cage’s concept of experimental music. Music does not appear as the outcome of predefined concepts, but rather as a situational process that emerges from attention, openness, and responsiveness to concrete conditions. Working with tape, modular synthesizers, analog machines, and digital systems is not framed as a discourse of technological progress, but as a pragmatic expansion of musical possibilities for action.
Fei emphasizes the importance of community, informal knowledge exchange, and collaborative modes of work. The pronounced DIY character of the practice—from engaging with historical instruments such as Buchla synthesizers to the continual reuse of “old” technologies—stands in the context of Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening. Deep Listening understands listening as an embodied, socially situated practice that is not limited to the concert format.
Furthermore, the interview addresses current institutional transformations resulting from the integration of Mills College into Northeastern University, which also affect the archiving, accessibility, and transmission of historical materials. The legacy of the Tape Music Center is less a closed tradition than an open constellation of diverse approaches. In this way, Fei positions experimental music not as a style or method, but as a cultural practice characterized by heterogeneity, processuality, and a conscious distance from normative academic models.

 

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

October 7th 2023, via ZOOM
October 16th 2023
3922 23rd 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.

 

131 Log 231006
Interview with David Bernstein 

October 6th, 2023
Littlefield Concert Hall
Mills College/Northeastern Campus

Professor of Music David Bernstein is an acclaimed scholar in Western Music Theory and current musicology. He is the editor of the renowned book on early electronic music: The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde. Professor Bernstein has also served as the Head of the Music Department at Mills College.

Interview David Bernstein_October 2023.pdf

Abstract
David Bernstein revisits the history of the San Francisco Tape Music Centre (SFTMC) after its move from Divisadero Street to Mills College. Bernstein describes the newly founded Centre for Contemporary Music (CCM) at Mills College as the ‘ground zero’ of experimental music on the West Coast. Compositions with tape machines and electronic devices are at the centre of music as a ‘community enterprise,’ of improvisational practices and ‘thinking in multiple temporalities.’ With the takeover of Mills College by Northeastern University, this is now a thing of the past.