Vladimir Ussachevsky
A leading catalyst behind the rise of American electronic music, composer Vladimir Ussachevsky was born November 3, 1911 in Hailar, Manchuria; he emigrated to the U.S. in 1930, and after graduating from Pomona College went on to study at the Eastman School of Music. There he composed his first major works, among them 1935's Theme and Variations and 1938's Jubilee Cantata, as well as various other pieces for piano, vocal, choral and orchestral performance. Upon earning his Ph.D. in 1939, Ussachevsky joined the faculty at Columbia University in 1947; around this time he began making his first forays into electronic music, culminating a few years later with his acquisition of an Ampex tape recorder. In 1952, he and colleague Otto Luening presented the first tape music performance ever given in the U.S., where among the pieces premiered was Ussachevsky's musique concrète landmark Sonic Contours; key works including 1954's Poem of Cycles and Bells and 1956's Piece for Tape Recorder followed, and in 1958 Ussachevsky and Luening received a Rockefeller Foundation grant to open the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the first such electro-acoustic facility in America. Complete with four analog tape studios for electronic composition as well as the room-sized RCA Mark II Synthesizer, the CPEMC was the launching pad for countless experimental works, not the least of which were those written by Ussachevsky himself. He died January 4, 1990.
© Jason Ankeny /TiVo
Discography
8 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
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Tape Recorder Music
Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening
Experimental - Released by PROFOUND on 3 Jan 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pioneers Of Electronic Music
Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening, Alice Shields, Bülent Arel, Pril Smiley
Classical - Released by New World Records on 1 Jan 1991
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vladimir Ussachevsky: Film Music
Classical - Released by New World Records on 1 Jan 1990
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vladimir Ussachevsky: Electronic And Acoustic Works 1957-1972
Classical - Released by New World Records on 1 Jan 1999
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Capstone Collection: Electric Clarinet
F. Gerard Errante, Burton Beerman, Jane Brockman, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Thea Musgrave
Classical - Released by Ravello Records on 7 Aug 2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Piece for Tape Recorder
Experimental - Released by INTERSECTION on 7 Apr 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Music of Luening, Ussachevsky & Bergsma
Classical - Released by NWCRI on 1 Jan 1956
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Pioneers of Electronic Music
György Ligeti, Bülent Arel, Vladimir Ussachevsky
Electronic - Released by SINETONE AMR on 6 May 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo