Point Reyes Light - January 13, 2000
Bolinas album nominated for New Age Grammy
For the fifth time, Bolinas resident Suzanne Ciani has received a Grammy nomination for "Best New Age Album" and will find out Feb. 23 if at last she's won one of the coveted music-industry awards.
Ciani, a pioneer composer and performer in the field of electronic and synthesized music, was nominated for her album Turning. Accompanied by six other Bay Area musicians, Ciani on Turning performs her own compositions on her own label, Seventh Wave Productions.
Turning may not be what most people think of as New Age, said Ciani last Friday. "New Age is a category with controversy associated with it," she acknowledged, "a large category with many factions."
Many people think of it "as a healing type of music, which is associated with a whole lifestyle."
Focus on orchestration Ciani prefers to think of New Age music as primarily instrumental with a focus on orchestration but with no vocals except when the voice is used as just another musical instrument.
She sees herself as "a composer who writes instrumental music" and feels she has been nominated in the New Age category because "it's the only one I fit in."
Ciani says she hasn't "the slightest idea" how the nominations are made. Professionals in the music industry vote on the nominees, but she believes there are "a lot of politics involved" with "the major labels having much more power and voting blocs" than smaller labels.
The various categories, she said, are the industry's way of "organizing everything about [music's] commercial life."
Turning is a collaboration of seven musicians with Ciani playing piano and synthesizer, Paul McCandless of Bolinas on reed instruments, Matt Eakle of Fairfax on flute, East Bay residents Michael Manring on bass and Joseph Ebert on cello, and Petaluma residents Teja Bell on guitar and Steve Kindler on violin.
Musical background Ciani's musical career began with traditional training in the music departments of UC Berkeley and Stanford University during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
It was a time when she became acquainted with John Chowning, who became famous for inventing the FM Synthesizer, which can duplicate the sound of any musical instrument, and Don Buchla, whom she calls, "The original thinker behind electronic musical instruments."
Buchla in the early 1960s invented an electronic instrument named after him, the Buchla. As described by Ciani, the Buchla had a flat-metal "touch plate" instead of a keyboard, and musicians playing it moved knobs and dials, patching chords together.
Composed ad music Ciani eventually moved to New York where she composed the music for such "classic" commercials as "Have a Coke and a Smile," a Merrill Lynch commercial that showed a bull meandering through in a china shop without knocking anything down, and early Energizer Bunny spots.
In New York she also recorded her own compositions on a major label Private Music-BMG, and received Grammy nominations for Neverland (1985) and Hotel Luna (1991).
Finally tiring of electronic music and wanting control over her own compositions, she returned West and moved to Bolinas in 1992 where she started her own recording company.
In addition to turning out two other Grammy-nominated albums since her return Dream Suite (1995) and Pianissimo II (1997), Ciani performed her own compositions on a Public Television special, Suzanne Ciani and The Wave: Live, which has already aired and will be repeated soon.
Glory in the nomination How does Ciani feel about the possibility of winning this year? "I'd love to win. It's like tennis It's more fun to win." However, she believes the real "glory is in the nomination" and that "to be singled out for a nomination is already an achievement." However, she added, "the cherry on the hot fudge sundae is to win."
Ciani plans to attend the Grammy awards in Los Angeles even though "I've been there so many times."
Also flying down for the ceremonies will be Ramblin' Jack Elliott of Marshall, whose 1999 release The Long Ride has been nominated in the "Best Traditional Folk Album" category.