Suzanne Ciani – Buchla Concert At Galeria Bonino New York April 1974 – Vinyl, LP, Finders Keepers, 2024
Vinyl LP pressing. The very first Buchla synthesizer performance by revolutionary composer Suzanne Ciani finally makes it’s fifty year journey from it’s switch-on New York art gallery to it’s long deserved and discerning global phonographic audience. With this previously unheard vinyl pressing, Finders Keepers Records are proud to present an archival project of ‘art music’ that redefines musical history.
This sonic installation album, is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesizer space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial musical moon. While pondering the early accolades attached to these golden era New York recordings it’s daunting to learn that these records were in fact not even records at all. What exists on this disc now was a manifesto and a one-time gateway to a new world, which somehow was only partially pushed ajar.
Captured here is a genuine live act exploring new territories with a fully performable music instrument. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic pulses, tones and harmonics found on these 1970’s artistic gallery collaborations / live presentations (then soon to be followed by academic grant applications and educational demonstrations) had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the widely marketed work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita, then the name Suzanne Ciani and her infectious influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record.
