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A “popcorn” performance at the 1980 Festival of the Bourges International Institute of Electroacoustic Music. Ami Radunskaya is on the left, Don Buchla is on the right, Morton Subotnick is in the middle behind the popcorn, and Ramon Sender is playing the accordion. Photo provided by Ami Radunskaya.
A Buchla Birthday Tribute Featuring Ezra Buchla, Joel Davel, and Ami Radunskaya - LIVESTREAM
The closing event for our exhibition is being held on what would have been Don Buchla's 90th birthday. It will feature programming from Ami Radunskaya, Ezra Buchla, and Joel Davel, an engineer who worked with Don Buchla to develop the Marimba Lumina and several other later instruments. The day's events will include a lecture by Joel Davel about his years working with Don to develop the Buchla Lightning, Marimba Lumina, and 200e series. This will be followed by a lecture by Ezra Buchla discussing Don's legacy as a creative collaborator. The lecture will also include a technical portion where Ezra examines Don's circuit designs and demonstrates how his principles can be adapted into DIY devices that audience members can build themselves.
The exhibition's final concert will open that evening with a performance by Joel Davel featuring EMEAPP's Marimba Lumina Gold as well as the Buchla Lightning and Thunder. Joel will be followed by Ami Radunskaya, who will be recreating several of her historic Muse & The Fuse performances with assistance from Ezra and Joel. Selections will include the Sili Con Cello piece (featuring Ami's custom-built Buchla electric cello) and Consensus Conduction (featuring a recreation of Buchla's Consensus Conduction technology, where the audience helps to control the performance via flashlights). Additional pieces may include Sonatine Chimique and Fontanella Jello.
The closing concert will also feature video clips that look back at all of the other exhibition events as well as a video tribute to Don assembled with the help of all of the exhibition's collaborators.
There is no fee to register for the livestream but donations are encouraged and gratefully received. Please be sure to register for the afternoon and evening events separately.
NOTE: Because we send out livestream links immediately preceding the event, each attendee must register separately. This page can only be used to register one person at at a time.
1:00-2:15pm Voltage and Vision: Twenty Years inside the Buchla Universe by Joel Davel
Joel Davel will discuss his time working with Don Buchla from 1993 - 2013. While working with Buchla, Davel contributed to the development of the Buchla Lightning, the Marimba Lumina, other unfinished projects, and through the 200e series released by Buchla and Associates proior to the sale of the company. Davel will present an inside perspective on Don's design methods and music philosophy in a lecture that includes multiple instrument demos and performance samples. A brief Q&A period will follow the talk.
2:30-4:30 pm Creative Collaboration: Exploring Don Buchla's Approach to Technical Design and Human-Machine Interaction by Ezra Buchla
Ezra Buchla will present a lecture focusing on Don Buchla's legacy as a creative collaborator and how that ethos shaped his technical and design innovations. He will explore how Don's partnerships with artists and researchers informed his approach to interface design, sonic control, and human-machine interaction. He will examine the elegant simplicity of some of Don's circuit designs -- such as the Lightning and the "Sili" brain -- and demonstrates how these principles can be adapted into DIY devices that audience members can build themselves.
NOTE: The building will close after the Ezra's talk and reopen at 6:30 for the evening concert. We are happy to provide recommendations for area restaurants for dinner!
7:00PM Concert Performance & Celebration
The exhibition's final concert will open with a performance set by Joel Davel that features EMEAPP's Marimba Lumina Gold as well as the Buchla Lightning and Buchla Thunder. Joel's performance will perform Out of Thin Air, a piece he composed for the Buchla Lightning Wands as well as Mailbox Full, a piece for the Buchla Thunder. He will also be debuting a newly composed piece for the Marimba Lumina entitled Cabernet and Quesadillas.
Following intermission, Ami Radunskaya will take the stage to recreate several of her historic Muse and The Fuse performances with assistance from Ezra and Joel. Selections will include the Sili Con Cello piece (featuring Ami's custom-built Buchla electric cello) and Consensus Conduction (featuring a recreation of Buchla's Consensus Conduction technology, where the audience helps to control the performance via flashlights). Additional pieces may include Sonatine Chimique, based on a chemical reaction, and Fontanella Jello for multiple instruments. Ezra Buchla and Joel Davel will assist by playing some of Don Buchla's original parts for these performances. Between pieces, Ami plans to present memories of her time with Don Buchla as well as her musings on musical instrument evolution as a collaboration between inventor, scientist and performer (sometimes in the same person!)
Banner artwork courtesy of Sandy Frazier (https://sandyfrazier.com/)
EZRA BUCHLA
Ezra Buchla is not only Don Buchla’s son — he is also a musician and audio software developer with a deep background in music technology. His work over the past 20 years has included hardware and software product development, as well as a diverse array of custom tools for individual artists and researchers. He has done significant work in the field of hearing-assistance technology, in both statistical and analytical mathematical modeling across a variety of domains, and in AAA game development. He worked for Buchla & Associates for over nine years, helping to develop the software and firmware for many of Don’s later digital creations.
JOEL DAVEL
Joel Davel is a composer, performer, and instrument designer whose more than 20-year collaboration with Don Buchla shaped the development of Buchla’s electronic instruments from the 1990s through Buchla’s final years. Beginning with enhancements to Buchla’s innovative Lightning controller in 1993, Davel played a key role in the evolution of Buchla’s hardware and firmware—most notably the design and implementation of the Marimba Lumina and 200e series. Davel continues to regularly design, support, and perform with Buchla instruments. (Photo credit: Mitch Tobias)
AMI RADUNSKAYA
Ami Radunskaya is a math professor and talented cellist who was the composer and original performer of the piece for which Buchla built the Sili-Con Cello in EMEAPP’s collection. Buchla also built her a custom electric cello (the only one of its kind) that she still performs with today. As “The Muse and The Fuse,” Don and Ami did several famous experimental music performances together in the 1970s including the Sili-Con Cello piece and a performance called Consensus Conduction where the audience could control various aspects of the piece in real time, such as tempo and timbre, by shining flashlights on a screen. (Photo credit: Hilary Radner)
This event is part of EMEAPP/MMT's special exhibition Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla. Funding for this exhibition has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. We are deeply grateful for their support.