Morton Subotnick: Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer

World premiere screening of »Subotnick: Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer«

20:00

Q&A with Morton Subotnick & director Robert Fantinatto, moderated by Lisa Blanning

21:45

Morton Subotnick & Lillevan »As I Live and Breathe« live AV

22:45

Ticketing closed

The event is presented by CTM Festival, Ableton, and Waveshaper Media, the Toronto-based production company behind Subotnick and the acclaimed modular synthesizer documentary I Dream Of Wires (as seen on Netflix / SkyArts). The screening of Subotnick will be followed by a discussion and Q&A with Subotnick and film director Robert Fantinatto. The evening closes with Morton Subotnick presenting »As I Live and Breathe,« one of his last performance pieces, which he will present together with stunning live visuals from longtime collaborator Lillevan.

About the film Subotnick: Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer

Through a series of candid interviews and illuminating conversations with key figures from his past and present, Subotnick provides an overview of this fascinating composer’s rich life and uncompromising career. Over five years in the making, the film is a first-hand account, and an artistic portrait, of this seminal composer, whose approach to art, and outlook on life, reveal a unique thinker with a fiercely individualist streak. The film narrative moves along two parallel lines; exploring a year in his life as he creates and shapes the multi-media chamber opera, Crowds and Power, while simultaneously exploring his past — going back in time to his days as a child prodigy on the clarinet, his disastrous stint in the army during the Korean War, founding the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and culminating in his breakthrough recording of Silver Apples of the Moon, the world’s first electronic music composition specifically created for the record medium.

Featuring several live performances from around the globe, captured in glorious surround sound, and augmented with innovative liquid-light psychedelic effects, Subotnick is a multimedia experience that highlights and celebrates one of the world’s most influential living composers.

About the concert: Morton Subotnick & Lillevan »As I Live and Breathe«

Between 1961 and 1980, Morton Subotnick’s principal work as a composer was devoted to the development of electronic music as a studio art. The first four years of that period were spent with Don Buchla designing and building an appropriate instrument with which to make music specifically for recorded formats, to be heard in one’s home. The work which brought Subotnick celebrity was Silver Apples of the Moon (1966–1967), which marked the first time an original large-scale composition had been created specifically for the disc medium – a conscious acknowledgment that the home stereo system constituted a present-day form of chamber music. Later, Subotnick began creating works for electronics and instruments and large-scale multimedia projects. In the last decade, technology has made it possible for him to bring equipment onto the stage and perform in public.

The work technique and process of the last decade of his creativity has resulted in »As I Live and Breathe,« which Subotnick feels will be the ultimate fulfillment of his public performance; one of the last, if not the last, of his public performance works. Centered around Subotnick’s breath – which becomes ever more musically and visually ornamented, only to end with a single, exhaled breath – the work is meant as a musical metaphor for the composer’s life in music.

Event Access

The film contains scenes with stroboscopic effects.

The venue is wheelchair accessible. We offer free access for an accompanying person for holders of a »Schwerbehinderten Ausweis mit Kategorie B« card. Please get in touch with us in advance to make arrangements via boxoffice@ctm-festival.de. There are no designated handicapped spaces outside the venue. The nearest subway stations are U Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and S+U Alexanderplatz, both of which are wheelchair accessible.

Half price tickets are available to »Berlin Pass« holders. You must present your Berlin Pass together with your ticket when entering the venue. Reduced tickets for Berlin Pass holders are also available at the door, subject to availability.

If you have general questions about event accessibility please write us: accessibility@ctm-festival.de.

Presented by  CTM Festival, Ableton, and Waveshaper Media

Subotnick: Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer
Canada, 2022, 104 min, OV English
A Waveshaper Media Production
Direction, Camera, Editing by Robert Fantinatto
Produced by Jason Amm
Location Sound by Justin Ladd
Liquid Light Effects by Aidan Fantinatto
Starring: Morton Subotnick, Joan La Barbara, Ramon Sender
With: Lillevan, Alec Empire