Name: Music For Denali
Brand: Suzanne Ciani

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

FKR 106LP

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2020-10-09

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Forced Exposure

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

5060099507427

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Suzanne Ciani

Genre US

Electronic

Label US

Finders Keepers

Suzanne Ciani is an acclaimed artist known for her groundbreaking work in electronic music. Born in Indiana‎, she discovered her passion for music at a young age and taught herself to play the piano and read sheet music. During her time at Wellseley College, Suzanne explored both performance and composition while also developing a fascination with technology.

Her studies led her to meet influential figures in electronic music, including John Chowning, Max Matthews, and Don Buchla. Suzanne became captivated by synthesizers and spent years experimenting with these machines to create unique compositions. However, as the industry shifted towards simpler instruments that replicated traditional sounds, Suzanne returned to classical instrumentation.

This shift resulted in Grammy-nominated albums such as "Dream Suite," which showcased her mastery of piano and orchestra arrangements. Her commitment to blending classical elements with electronic influences can be heard in works like "Pianissimo II" and "Turning." Suzanne's innovative approach has solidified her status as a pioneering artist within the realm of electronic music.

Finders Keepers' continued and unwaning commitment to preserving the archives of composer Suzanne Ciani pays off in an avalanche of dividends with this latest master tape discovery, placing further markers in the historical development of electronic music and cinematic composition. Developed at a lesser-documented axis combining Ciani's key disciplines as a revolutionary synthesist and an accomplished pianist, these early works from 1973 capture a rare glimpse of one of the world's most important electronic music figures embarking on the early throes of a fruitful career as a film composer and sound designer with this rare and previously unheard documentary music illustrating the first-ever skiers' decent from the peak of the tallest mountain in Alaska. Capturing innocence and optimism in its composition, but never less than masterful in its realization, Denali takes what would later become the yin and yang in Ciani's versatile musical personality and provides unrivalled vistas from both side of the mountain, scaling a treacherous and fine creative line. The music on this record was also commissioned two years before Suzanne's first Buchla concerts in 1974 and 1975, which were accompanied by her seminal National Endowment Paper, and would reveal Suzanne's proud commitment to the developed Buchla instrument. After hearing this record, it will come as little surprise that the track known as "Ski Song" would later be re-appropriated (and rerecorded) on Ciani's globally critically acclaimed debut album Seven Waves (EGGS 015CD). It stands as testimony to the composer's determination and inventive nature that this single track, which would later make its way on to every future music best-seller list in the country, was originally composed on just piano and the modular synth model which she had helped to assemble on Buchla's production line ten years before her Tokyo debut. "Denali was composed using just Buchla and piano," explains Suzanne in 2020. "It was recorded at Rainbow Recording, which is the studio I found and shared with recording engineer Richard Beggs, who then sold it to Francis Ford Coppola after I fell in love and quickly moved to LA," she laments. Instead, Suzanne would in a short time find her filmic feet in Hollywood (providing sound design for Michael Small's aforementioned The Stepford Wives soundtrack) which would later lead to her winning the accolade of first female film composer to single-handedly record a major motion picture with The Incredible Shrinking Woman in 1982. But it was ten years earlier with Denali that the ball had started rolling alongside the film reel sprockets at Rainbow Recordings.

Music For Denali

Music US