Biography
Otto Luening (born June 15, 1900 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; died September 2, 1996 in New York City) was a German- American composer and an early pioneer of electronic music.
Luening's 'Tape Music', including A Poem in Cycles & Bells, Gargoyles for Violin & Synthesized Sound, and Sounds of New Music demonstrated the early potential of synthesizers and special editing techniques for so-called classical music. An October 28, 1952 concert with Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City introduced Fantasy in Space, flute recordings manipulated on magnetic tape, and led to an appearance on The Today Show with Dave Garroway. Luening was co-founder, along with Ussachevsky, of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1958. He also co-founded Composers Recordings, Inc. in 1954, with Douglas Moore and Oliver Daniel.
His notable students include Charles Wuorinen, Harvey Sollberger, and Karl Korte.
He was survived by his wife Catherine.
Vladimir Kirilovitch Ussachevsky (Hailar, Manchuria, November 3, 1911 – New York, New York, January 2, 1990) was a Russian-American composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music.
Born to Russian parents in Manchuria (now Inner Mongolia, China), Ussachevsky emigrated to the United States in 1931 and studied music at Pomona College in Claremont, California (B.A., 1935), as well as at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York (M.M., 1936, Ph.D., 1939). His early, neo-Romantic works were composed for traditional instruments, but in 1951 he began composing electronic music.
In 1947, following a stint with the U.S. Army Intelligence division in World War II, he joined the faculty of Columbia University, teaching there until his retirement in 1980. Together with Otto Luening, Ussachevsky founded, in 1959, the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City. While acting as head of the Electronic Music Center Ussachevsky specified the ADSR envelope in 1965, a basic component of modern synthesizers, samplers and electronic instruments.
Ussachevsky also taught and was composer-in-residence at the University of Utah. He served as president of the American Composers Alliance from 1968 to 1970 and was an advisory member of the CRI record label, which released recordings of a number of his compositions.
His notable students include Charles Wuorinen, Alice Shields, Ilhan Mimaroglu, Ingram Marshall, and Richard Einhorn.
Recordings of his music have also been released on the Capstone, d'Note, and New World labels.
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
