Morton Subotnick

1933-

Morton Subotnick was born in Los Angeles, California on April 13, 1933. He graduated with his bacholer's degree at the University of Denver and his master's degree at Mills College, studying composition with Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. This was followed by a teaching position at Mills College from 1959 to 1966. While he was at Mills College, Subotnick co-founded along with Ramon Sender, the San Francisco tape Music Center. Among the people involved in the studio during its early days were Pauline Oliveros and Donald Buchla, an inventor of a voltage controlled synthesizer.

Subotnick also served as Music Director of the Ann Halprin Dance Company and the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. It was toward the close of his career at Mills College that Subotnick received a commission from Nonesuch Records to create an electronic music composition specifically for the phonograph record. The result was Silver Apples of the Moon, completed on the Buchla Synthesizer in 1967. The work was considered so successful that Nonesuch offered a second commission to Subotnick. The result was The Wild Bull finished a year later in 1968.

While he was finishing these compositions, Subotnick held a position as professor of music at New York University. In addition to his professorship, Subotnick served as Music Director of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater and served as Director of Electronic Music at the original Electronic Circus at St. Mark's Place. These were followed by positions at the University of Maryland, the University of Pittsburgh, and California Institute of the Arts, at which he currently serves as head of the composition department.

Since his appointment at California Institute of the Arts, Subotnick has written several significan works including A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur, The Key of Songs, and The Double Life of Amphibians which was premiered at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

The music community has recognized the achievements of Morton Subotnick. He has won six National Endowment of the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Meet the Composer grant, two Rockefeller grants, an American Academy of Arts and Letter Award, and a Brandeis Award in Music Composition.