Saturday, February 26, 2022
7pm doors / 7:30pm show
Tickets $25 (discounted or free for members)
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Masks & full vaccine (or negative COVID-19 tests taken within 48 hrs) required for entry.

Suzanne Ciani is a five-time Grammy award-nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and neo-classical recording artist who has released over 20 solo albums including "Seven Waves," and "The Velocity of Love," along with a landmark quad LP “LIVE Quadraphonic,” which restarted her Buchla modular performances. Her work has been featured in films, games, and countless commercials as well.

She was inducted into the first class of Keyboard Magazine's Hall of Fame alongside other synth luminaries, including Bob Moog, Don Buchla and Dave Smith and received the Moog Innovation Award. Most recently, she is the recipient of the Independent Icon Award from A2IM.

Suzanne has provided the voice and sounds for Bally's groundbreaking "Xenon" pinball machine, created Coca-Cola’s pop-and-pour sound, designed logos for Fortune 500 companies, and carved out a niche as one of the most creatively successful female composers in the world. A Life in Waves, a documentary about Ciani’s life and work, debuted at SXSW in 2017 and is available to watch on all digital platforms.

Ciani is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds a Masters in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley. sevwave.com

Part of the Noise Pop 2022 Festival

Friday, February 25, 2022
6pm doors / 6:30pm film
Tickets $10 (discounted or free for members)
Get Tickets Now
Masks & full vaccine (or negative COVID-19 tests taken within 48 hrs) required for entry.

As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time.

Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies and subsequent plays by Four Tet, Caribou and more, the music had finally found its audience two generations down the line.

Keyboard Fantasies sees Glenn Copeland commit his life and music to screen for the first time - an intimate coming of age story spinning pain and the suffering of prejudice into rhythm, hope and joy.

Half aural-visual history, half DIY tour-video, the film provides a vehicle for our newly appointed queer elder to connect with youth across the globe. A timely lullaby to soothe those souls struggling to make sense of the world. (LUCA)

2021 | 71 min. | NR | Greenwich Entertainment | Digital

Tuesday, February 15, 2021; 12pm PST
40-minute talk followed by 30 minutes of Q&A broadcast live at thelab.org
RSVP HERE FOR ZOOM LINK

Suzanne Ciani and Lisa Rovner will discuss Sisters with Transistors, a documentary film about electronic music’s female pioneers. The film maps a new history of electronic music through the visionary women whose radical experimentations with machines redefined the boundaries of music, including Clara Rockmore, Daphne Oram, Bebe Barron, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Maryanne Amacher, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and Laurie Spiegel. The film is now available via online streaming services.

Suzanne Ciani is a five-time Grammy award-nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and new age recording artist. While in grad school in Berkeley, Suzanne became entranced with the ability to produce music with a machine and devoted herself to the Buchla synthesizers for the next two decades, pioneering live electronic performances in quadrophonic sound. Alongside a successful artistic career, she was also responsible for scoring TV spots and crafting iconic sound bites for some of America’s largest corporations throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. The sound effect of a Coca-Cola bottle being opened and poured is one of her most famed achievements. Ciani was also the first woman to score a major Hollywood film (Lily Tomlin’s ‘The Incredible Shrinking Woman’ in 1981). A Life in Waves, a documentary about Ciani’s life and work, debuted at SXSW in 2017 and is available to watch on all digital platforms.

Lisa Rovner is an award winning French American writer and filmmaker based in London who got her start directing arty adverts for the likes of Opening Ceremony and Margiela. In 2021, she released her acclaimed debut feature documentary Sisters with Transistors with Modern Films (UK) Metrograph Pictures(US) and KinoSmith (Canada). Narrated by Laurie Anderson it premiered at SXSW 2020, won a special mention at CPH:DOX 2020, the Indie Music Award at Indie Lisboa and Grand Prize Music Documentary at FIPADOCS. It was long listed for Best Documentary by British Independent Film Awards. The Guardiangave it 5 stars, NYtimes called it "Bewitching", LAtimes "Fascinating". Wall Street Journal "Hallucinogenic". Rovner has collaborated with some of the most internationally respected artists and brands including Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Sebastien Tellier, Maison Martin Margiela and Acne. When she's not working on feature projects, she makes short films and filmed portraits about and with the people and things she cares about. Instagram: @lisarovner @sisterswithtransistors

The Forum is an experiment in creating discourse within the context of isolation. Art creates a space for reconsidering our knowledge across various social and professional fields. It asks us: Why do we perceive things the way we do? What are we living for? How can we reimagine our relationships to the human and non-human world? The Forum proposes that the project of freedom is a project of making a world with others. So, we invite you to help us answer: what can we do now?

Please bring your ideas, proposals, questions to discuss following the talk.