Suzanne Ciani is a composer, recording
artist, and pioneer in the field of electronic music. She is best loved
for her 15 albums of original music, which feature her performances
in a broad array of expressions: pure electronic, solo piano, piano
with orchestra, and piano with jazz ensemble. No matter the medium,
Ciani's music communicates the special intimacy, passion, and sensitivity
that has become her trademark and prompted fans to buy over a million
of her albums. On her latest recording SILVER
SHIP, her first CD of
new material in five years, she uses the sea as an inspirational starting
point and combines her early classical acoustic-piano training and
exploratory electronic-music roots to achieve the most mature musical
statement of her career.
Ciani's early albums were
entirely electronic. She slowly began incorporating acoustic instrumentation
and eventually released
several solo acoustic-piano
CDs. She also has recorded with full orchestra (DREAM SUITE) and
with The Wave, her own group of top jazz musicians. SILVER
SHIP slips back-and-forth
between these styles as it combines The Wave's acoustic instrumentation
(piano, flute, oboe, sax, cello, guitar and fretless bass) with rich
synthesizer textures, including leading-edge string arrangements.
The new album and other recordings by Ciani (pronounced cha-nee)
are available
in quality book and record stores nationwide as well as online at
sites such as amazon.com, digital download locations and Ciani's
own www.sevwave.com.
Ciani's
family came from Italy, and after many visits, the country has become
her second home.
About half the material on the new
CD was penned
there while most of the rest was composed in her Northern California
home perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. Many of SILVER
SHIP's song titles reference the ocean ("Wine Dark Sea," "Open
Seas," "Sargasso Sea") or islands ("Capri," "Stromboli").
" I have always been inspired by the sea," she says. There is something
eternal about the rhythmic aspect of one wave following another. I came
to appreciate that same symmetry in oscillating sound waves when I was
first exploring electronic music. Also, the shape of a wave informed
the structure of my early compositions, building and then receding. My
first album was titled SEVEN WAVES, my record company is Seventh Wave
Productions, and in the early days I called my compositions 'Waves' and
simply numbered them. And Silver Ship is a metaphor for my willingness
to "set sail" to find beauty again after the difficult post
divorce "shipwrecked" years.
But
in addition to Ciani's recent life experiences and personal growth,
she brings a rich and
varied musical history to her
latest recording.
After hearing albums of romantic music by Grieg and Rachmaninoff
when she was seven, Suzanne taught herself to play piano and
read music.
She received her formal training at Wellesley College and went
on to the
University of California at Berkeley where she received her
Masters Degree in Music Composition. More importantly, she
met and studied
under three
of the founders of electronic music – John Chowning,
Max Matthews and Don Buchla.
Suzanne became entranced
with the ability to produce music with a machine, and she became
a devotee of synthesizers
for the next
two
decades. Ciani
was one of the very first women to make a name for herself
in the field. She began her experimentation with a Buchla
synth (the interface
was
done with dials, sliding knobs, patch cords and voltage generators
rather than a keyboard). She would program it to compose
and play endless compositions
and then leave the massive machine running for months at
a time.
In
1975 Ciani moved to New York City, contributed to the SoHo
art scene, founded the Electronic
Center for New Music,
and
began introducing
musicians such as minimalist Philip Glass and Patrick Moraz
of Yes to the possibilities
of synthesizers. With the goal of eventually recording
her own music, she established Ciani Musica, Inc, which quickly
became
one of the
foremost commercial production companies in the country,
featuring Suzanne as
a top "sound designer." Soon she was in high-demand
by the Fortune 500 companies and created award-winning
musical scores and logos
for Coca-Cola (the Pop 'n' Pour campaign), Columbia Pictures,
AT&T,
Pepsi, GE, Merrill Lynch and hundreds of others. Beyond
the corporate world, Ciani was in demand to bring her synthesized
sounds to pop and
jazz records (Meco's "Star Wars" platinum hit,
Spyro Gyra, the Starland Vocal Band and CTI jazz artists)
as well as projects such
as the movie "Fame" and a modern opera by Gian
Carlo Menotti (she created an original electronic score
for one of his New York productions).
Suzanne also composed and performed the soundtrack for
Lily Tomlin's movie "The Incredible Shrinking Woman," and
two feature documentaries on the life and teachings of
Mother Teresa.
These successes allowed
Suzanne to start releasing her own music on major labels beginning
with the classic
synthesizer album
SEVEN WAVES (first
released on JVC in Japan and by Atlantic/Finnadar in
the US). With her next album, THE VELOCITY OF LOVE (first released
on
RCA), the
title track
became #1 on the newly-emerging new age and contemporary
instrumental radio stations. Her music helped define
this
new musical genre.
Next followed five releases on Private Music/Windham
Hill/BMG, including
the romantic NEVERLAND and HISTORY OF MY HEART, the first
PIANISSIMO (solo
piano) and the Italy-inspired HOTEL LUNA. Upon establishing
her own independent label, she released DREAM SUITE (recorded
in
Moscow with
a 70-piece orchestra),
two more acoustic-piano solo outings (PIANISSIMO II and
III),
SUZANNE CIANI AND THE WAVE: LIVE! (her jazziest product
which also was
filmed for PBS broadcast and DVD release), TURNING and
two collections: MEDITATIONS and PURE ROMANCE. While
always following
her own
muse, her recordings
became some of the bestsellers in the field and earned
numerous accolades
and awards including five GRAMMY nominations. In addition,
Ciani has toured throughout the United States, Italy,
Spain and Asia.
On SILVER
SHIP all the tracks
are composed, produced and arranged by Ciani (with string arrangements
by
Mitch Farber).
Playing
the acoustic
piano and synthesizer parts, Ciani is joined by her
band, The Wave, including reed player Paul McCandless (Oregon,
Bela Fleck,
Paul
Winter), flautist
Matt Eakle (Dave Grisman Quintet, Jerry Garcia), guitarist
Teja Bell (Ancient Future, Georgia Kelly), and fretless
bassist extraordinaire
Michael Manring (Michael Hedges, Will Ackerman). Also
featured is
cellist Joe Hebert, who has recorded with Suzanne previously.
The energy of the album flows like waves with emotional
peaks and troughs. The recording begins with the
poignant "For Lise," written
for Suzanne’s friend who was walking in the woods with her classmate
30 years ago, and after they decided to go their own ways, Lise's friend
was murdered. "It has haunted my friend all these years and when
I heard the story, it affected me too." The next piece, "Wine
Dark Sea," a reference to Homer's "Odyssey," shifts gears
to more world fusion and features McCandless' astonishing and bluesy
improvisations around the main melody. "Stromboli," an Italian
island famed for the affair of film director Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid
Bergman, is Ciani's tribute to the style of Italian movie music. "Capri," an
Italian island where Ciani lived for six months, features energetic jazz
flute improvs by Matt Eakle. Ciani explores her classical roots on the
somber "Eclipse." With "Open Seas," Ciani captures
the joy and freedom of sailing (and also revisits the past since it includes
wave sounds created on the Buchla and Eventide SP0219 several decades
ago). The jazzy "Dentecane" was named after the small town
in Italy where it was composed. "Snow Crystals" features McCandless'
oboe beautifully entwined with Suzanne's piano. The bittersweet, melancholy "Sargasso
Sea" is a timeless piano-cello duet inspired
by a mysterious place in the ocean with very little
wind and much seaweed where sailing ships
were often stranded.
On
rare occasions Suzanne utilizes a vocalist on one
of her songs. On the title track of SILVER
SHIP, Ciani
wrote
music
to go with
lyrics provided
by her sister, poet and visual artist Mary Ciani
Saslow (who designs all of Ciani's covers for Seventh
Wave),
and enlisted
singer Valerie
Wilson, whom Suzanne worked with on advertising
jingles years ago in New York. A lullaby, "Silver Ship" concerns
itself with "sailing
off to sleep and to this other world of dreams,
a psychic space where we can live other lives before coming
home to what we call the real world.
It's also a metaphor for any of the personal spiritual
journeys we go on during our lives," explains Suzanne.
" SILVER
SHIP is a recording that bridges between the East
Coast and the West Coast, between
Europe and the United States, between my early
days and the present, between acoustic and electronic sounds,
and between joy and sadness. All I can say is: Ride the waves."
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4360 Emerald Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80918
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