Buchla, Donald (Frederick)

Buchla, Donald (Frederick), American electronic-instrument designer and builder, composer, and performer; b. Southgate, Calif., April 17, 1937. After studying physics at the Univ. of Calif, at Berkeley (B.A., 1961), he became active with the San Francisco Tape Music Center, where in 1966 he installed the first Buchla synthesizer. That same year he founded Buchla Associates in Berkeley for the manufacture of synthesizers. In addition to designing and manufacturing electronic instruments, he also installed electronic-music studios at the Musikhögskolan in Stockholm and at IRCAM in Paris, among other institutions. In 1975 he became co-founder of the Electric Weasel Ensemble, a live electronic-music group, and in 1978 he became codirector of the Artists’ Research Collective in Berkeley. He held a Guggenheim fellowship in 1978.

Works

With electronic instruments: Cicada Music for some 2, 500 Cicadas (1963); 5 Video Mirrors for Audience of 1 or More (1966); Anagnorisis for 1 Performer and Voice (1970); Harmonic Pendulum for Buchla Series 200 Synthesizer (1972); Garden for 3 Performers and Dancer (1975); Keyboard Encounter for 2 Pianos (1976); Q for 14 Instruments (1979); Silicon Cello for Amplified Cello (1979); Consensus Conduction for Buchla Series 300 Synthesizer and Audience (1981); also an orchestration of D. Rosenboom’s How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims for 2 Buchla Series 300 Synthesizers (1969).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire