One of the most legendary artists performing at Rewire this year is Suzanne Ciani. She’s joined by Darren J. Cunningham, or Actress, to perform a piece called Concrète Waves.
Ciani is a pioneer of electronic music and one of its most iconic female composers. She’s also a neo-classical recording artist who has released over 20 solo albums, the first of which was Seven Waves from 1982. Born in the US, she made music for many commercial entities in the 70s, including creating Coca-Cola’s pop-and-pour sound.
Her debut album was released by Finnadar and then reissued a few years later by Private Music – the label founded by Tangerine Dream’s Peter Baumann. This is the foundation of the new piece, which Actress calls ‘R&B concrète’ and where “atmospheric scenes of twinkling ambience and furrowed noise meet sodium-lit field recordings and bassy warped drum sequences”.
Ciani will be playing the Buchla synthesiser which she mastered decades ago. If you want to know more about her long and astounding career I suggest you check out the documentary A Life in Waves about Ciani’s life and work from 2017.
