David borden

Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co., the world’s first all-synthesizer musical ensemble, will celebrate its 40th anniversary season with a free concert at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca.

The concert will feature two compositions by David Borden, the group’s leader who taught at Cornell University for 37 years.

For Sunday’s concert, Borden will be joined by keyboardists and frequent collaborators David Yearsley, Blaise Bryski and Josh Oxford.

Details are available at the Mother Mallard site.

via stargazette

Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co, a pioneering synthesizer ensemble from the early days of synthesizers, is playing a free concert tonight to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

Mother Mallard presented its first concert in spring 1969. The group was founded by David Borden and has been recognized as the world’s first synthesizer ensemble. The first concert took place in Barnes Hall on the Cornell campus, and each piece on that concert was an Ithaca premiere, including a few by Morton Feldman and John Cage. The 40th anniversary concert will take place in Barnes Hall at 8 p.m. Sunday, March 29.

Three pieces will be given world premieres, with the featured work being Viola Farber in 7 Movements with live video showing Farber’s dancing and choreography both as a soloist and with her company. In addition, a section from Borden’s The Continuing Story of Counterpoint, composed in 1979, will receive its first performance. And finally, a piece honoring Jimmy Giuffre, the gifted jazz composer and clarinetist/saxophonist will be premiered. Giuffre was Borden’s first composition teacher who died last April at the age of 87.

Performing on this concert will be keyboardists David Yearsley, Blaise Bryski, Josh Oxford and David Borden, with Gabriel Borden on electric guitar. Live video is by Noni Korf Vidal and Franck Vidal.

The concert is free and open to the public. Visit music.cornell.edu or call 255-4760 for more information. Read more…

The Bob Moog Foundation has been awarded an “Archiving and Preservation Planning Grant” from the GRAMMY Foundation to assess the preservation needs of the over 300 reel-to-reel tapes in Bob’s archives.

These tapes include seminal works in synthesis from the mid-60s to the late 70s, such as works from Herb Deutsch, Wendy Carlos, Larry Fast, Isao Tomita, Keith Emerson, Roger Powell, Chris Swansen, John Weiss, David Borden, Joel Chadabe, John Eaton and many, many more.

The $8,000.00 grant provides for the assessment of the tape’s condition by a team of experts including an archivist, a preservationist (responsible for digital transfer), a historian and a copyright expert. The assessment team includes archivist Steve Weiss, Sound and Image Librarian for UNC-CH, preservationist Seva David Ball, recording engineer/mastering engineer, Soundcurrent Mastering, historian Douglas Babb, Curator for the Bob Moog Foundation, and intellectual property attorney Steven Schnedler. Michelle Moog-Koussa will be coordinating the project.

Once the assessment is completed, the foundation will have the opportunity to apply for a $20,000-$40,000 preservation grant to set about preserving the tapes in a digital format, so that they can be shared through the Foundation website, traveling exhibits and eventual Bob Moog Museum.

Image: Bob Moog’s analog tape machine