Jon Appleton

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Jon Howard Appleton (born January 4, 1939 in Los Angeles ) is an American composer and improvisation musician who was a pioneer of electro-acoustic music . He also contributed significantly to the development of the synclavier .

Live and act

Appleton, whose parents worked in Hollywood film studios , initially grew up as a half-orphan . In his second marriage, the mother married a double bass player from the Los Angeles Philharmonic , who took Appleton to concerts and encouraged his piano lessons and his interest in composing. As communists , mother and adoptive father lost their jobs in the McCarthyist era . Between 1957 and 1961 he studied at Reed College in Portland, Oregon , where his fellow students performed all of the works he composed. After graduating, he moved to San Francisco , where he studied with Andrew Imbrie at the University of California, Berkeley , wrote musical comedies with Willard Bain (1938-2000), and made a living as a buyer for Macy’s . After a year as a music teacher, he was able to continue his studies at the University of Oregon with Homer Keller , Henri Lazarof , Felix Salzer and Robert Trotter . He used the studio there for electronic music and began to compose in this genre as well.

These compositions led to his invitation to Columbia University by Vladimir Ussachevski in 1966 . In the local center for electronic music he got to know Charles Dodge , Emmanuel Ghent and Richard Taruskin . Soon after, he was hired at Oakland University in Rochester (Michigan) to set up an electronic music studio. When he was unsupported, he went to Harvard College as a teacher . In 1969, Appleton, with the support of producer Bob Thiele , released his first Flying Dutchman record - Appleton Syntonic Menagerie ; The following year followed (together with Don Cherry ) Human Music , one of the first albums to combine live improvisation and synthesizer music.

In 1970 he received several grants from Guggenheim , Fulbright and The American-Scandinavian Foundation. In the same year he moved to Dartmouth College , where a studio for electronic music was built. There he initiated an electronic music competition that was held for three years. In 1976 he moved to Stockholm , where he headed the electronic music studio there, but returned to the USA after a year, where he worked on the development of the Synclavier at New England Digital Corporation before returning to Dartmouth College in 1978.

In the next few years he gave numerous concerts in North America and Europe, where he interpreted his compositions on this instrument. Many of his works were premiered at the Festival of the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges . In the 1990s, he helped found the Theremin Center for Electronic Music at the Moscow State Conservatory , where he taught regularly. In 2009, Appleton gave up teaching at Dartmouth College to teach at Stanford University . He also taught at Keio University (Mita) in Tokyo and the University of California, Santa Cruz . In recent years he has concentrated on composing instrumental and choral music in a quasi- romantic style . Two operas he composed, HOPI: La naissance de Désert and Le Dernier Voyage de Jean-Gallup de la Perouse , premiered in Nice .

In 2003 he received the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award .

Compositions

  • Apolliana (1970)
  • CCCP (In Memoriam: Anatoly Kuznetsov) (1969)
  • Ce que signifie la declaration of droits de l'Homme et du citoyen de 1789 pour les hommes et les citoyens des îles Marquises (1989)
  • Chef d'œuvre (1967)
  • Degitaru Ongaku (1983)
  • Dima Dobralsa Domoy (1996)
  • Dr Quisling in Stockholm (1971)
  • Georganna's Fancy (1966)
  • Georganna's Farewell (1975)
  • Homage To Orpheus (1969)
  • King's Road # 8 (1970)
  • Homenaje a Milanés (1987)
  • Human Music (1969)
  • In Deserto (1977)
  • In Medias Res (1978)
  • Mussems Sång (1976)
  • Newark Airport Rock (1969)
  • Oskuldens Dröm (1985)
  • Otahiti (1973)
  • San Francisco Airport Rock (1996)
  • Spuyten Duyvil (1967)
  • Stereopticon (1972)
  • The Sydsing Camklang (1976)
  • Syntrophia (1977)
  • Times Square Times Ten (1969)
  • The Turkina Suite for Two Pianos (1995)
  • U ha'amata 'atou' i te himene (1996)
  • Yamanotesen To Ko (1997)
  • The Turkina Sonata for Two Pianos (1998)
  • Zoetrope (1974)
  • Julia (Nine Pieces for Solo Piano) (2001)

Discography

  • Times Square Times Ten (1969)
  • Appleton Syntonic Menagerie (Flying Dutchman Records, 1969)
  • Jon Appleton / Don Cherry Human Music (1970)
  • The World Music Theater of Jon Appleton ( Folkways Records , 1974)
  • The Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer (Folkways, 1976)
  • Music for Synclavier and Other Digital Systems: With Jon Appleton, Composer (Folkways, 1978)
  • The Tale of William Mariner and The Snow Queen (1982)
  • Two Melodramas for Synclavier (Folkways, 1982)
  • Four Fantasies for Synclavier , (Folkways, 1982)
  • Contes de la mémoire (empreintes DIGITALes, IMED 9635, 1996)
  • Miracle bra! (with Achim Treu ) (2003)
  • Syntonic Menagerie 2 (2003)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Review (Dusted Magazin)
  2. ^ Synclavier history
  3. ↑ Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB) ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  4. ↑ Long-time music prof leaves for Stanford ( Memento from February 4, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Appleton, Jon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Appleton, Jon Howard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION american composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles