Lawrence Casserley - Biographical Information

Short biography

Lawrence Casserley (born UK, 1941) has devoted his professional career, as composer, conductor and performer, to real time electroacoustic music. In 1967 he became one of the first students of Electronic Music at the Royal College of Music, London, UK, on the new course taught by Tristram Cary. Later he became Professor-in-Charge of Studios and Adviser for Electroacoustic Music at the RCM, before taking early retirement in 1995.

He is best known for his work in free improvised music, particularly real-time processing of other musicians' sound, and he has devised a special computer processing instrument for this work (picture above). He has worked with many of the finest improvisers, particularly Evan Parker, with whom he works frequently as a duo partner, in various larger groupings and in the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. He also works as a soloist, processing sounds from voice, percussion and home-made instruments. CDs have been released by ECM, Konnex, Leo Records, Psi, Sargasso and Touch.

Much of Casserley's work has involved collaboration with other art forms, including poets, eg Bob Cobbing, and visual artists, including Colourscape artist Peter Jones. He is a Director of the Colourscape Music Festivals, presenting contemporary music in the unique environment of the Colourscape walk-in sculpture. He also collaborates with Peter Jones on sound/light installations.

Casserley's "instrumental" approach to live computer sound processing is the hallmark of his work; the Signal Processing Instrument allows him to use physical gestures to control the processing and to direct the morphology of the sounds. This is the culmination of forty years of experience in the performance of live electronic work; his earliest live electronic pieces were performed in 1969, and he has performed many of the live electronic "classics" of the 20th century; he has also collaborated with other composers to realise their electronic performance ideas. He is noted for the breadth and variety of his collaborations, which cross styles and generations.

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Text below by John Palmer, from the liner notes to the CD "Labyrinths" - Sargasso SCD 28030:

Lawrence Casserley - The heart in the machine

By now, Lawrence Casserley has established himself as one of the most stimulating composers and performers in the British music scene. Sprung from the avantgarde and experimental circuit of the 1960s, his musical output has grown steadily over the past 36 years, covering a wide range of instrumental forces from orchestra and chamber works through to electroacoustic. It is however in the latter medium that Casserley has managed to maintain a distinctly uncompromising profile throughout the years. And when so many composers embraced the safety of the tape medium, he courageously continued to choose the more risky and adventurous path of live-electronics.

Unlike many other musicians working in this field, the electronic medium is for Casserley a physical extension of the musical mind and body. Marshall McLuhan's claim that 'technology is the natural extension of man' finds here an admirable example. There is always a natural cohesion between, say, a guitar and its electronic counterpart: one may be the transformation of the other, but the two sources are always one instrument. It is this unity that makes Casserley'sperformances so intriguing. And in the hands of the wizard, electronics become powerful means of expressivity and lyricism taking the listener through labyrinths of sound.

John Palmer,May 1999

Another Short biography

Lawrence Casserley (born August 10, 1941 in Little Easton, Essex, UK) has dedicated his career to the development of live electronic processing as an instrument in its own right. In 1952 his family moved to New York, so his later schooling and university education were in the USA. After one year at Columbia University, New York, he left in order to develop his increasing interest in music. While undertaking various employment he attended evening classes, and later part-time day classes at the Chicago Musical College, Roosevelt University, Chicago, studying composition, conducting, percussion and flute. In 1966 he received a BMus degree with a major in composition, and returned to the UK to pursue postgraduate studies in composition, conducting and percussion at the Royal College of Music, London. In 1967 he became one of the first students on the new Electronic Music course at the RCM taught by Tristram Cary. In 1970 he was invited to join the RCM teaching staff as Cary's assistant, and subsequently became Professor-in-Charge of Studios and Adviser for Electroacoustic Music, before taking early retirement in 1995. From the 1970s onwards he led and/or performed with many live performance and/or multi-media groups, most notably Hydra (the multi-media group he formed with Eddie Franklin-White), Peter Donebauer's VAMP (Video and Music Performers), Tube Sculpture and the Electroacoustic Cabaret. During the 1980s he collaborated with Simon Desorgher in creating the Nettlefold Festival, which later became the Colourscape Music Festival; he continues to be a Director of Eye Music Trust, which runs this festival, as well as many other events and educational projects based around Peter Jones's inspiring inflated structures. He also collaborates with Peter Jones on interactive audio-visual installations under the title "Chromatic Harmony". Since leaving the RCM he has focused on free improvised music, and has developed a Signal Processing Instrument especially for live sound processing in improvised music. He is best known for his collaborations with Evan Parker (CDs on Touch and psi) and his Electro-acoustic Ensemble (CDs on ECM), but has also collaborated with many other musicians for performances throughout Europe, North and South America, India and Japan. He also has CDs released by Sargasso, Leo Records and Maya Records; new releases on psi and Konnex are in preparation.

Full Biography

LAWRENCE CASSERLEY

Composer, Performer, Conductor, Improviser, Computer Musician

Last changed 3 Sep, 2001

Lawrence Casserley , composer, conductor, percussionist/vocalist and electroacoustic musician, has more than a quarter century of experience as a composer, performer and improviser of electroacoustic music, with a particular emphasis on live performance. His first live electroacoustic works were composed and performed in 1969 and he has continued to use electroacoustic means in performance, often combined with light, theatre, mime and/or video.

Computer Music

A formative influence on Casserley's work came in 1963, when Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christoph Caskel and David Tudor visited Chicago. One of the works they played was "Kontakte", and hearing this work for the first time impressed on him the potential of the electronic medium. His first experience of computers came in 1966, his final year at Chicago Musical College, where he took a course in the use of computers for musical analysis. His project for the course was a motivic analysis of Varése's "Density 21.5".

In 1967, while a post-graduate student at the Royal College of Music, he joined a new course in electronic music founded by Tristram Cary. The RCM studio had close links through Cary with Peter Zinoviev's pioneering computer studio in Putney. In 1969 the material for the tape part of "Solos, Commentaries and Integrations" was created on Zinoviev's system, then further processed and montaged at the RCM studio.

From the first Casserley's major interest was in utilising electronics in live performance, and that has remained his prime concern. Throughout the 70s he worked with electronic performance in a range of contexts, collaborating with musicians, poets and visual artists as well as performing his own compositions.

In addition, he worked on the performance of many compositions involving live electronics. At the Royal College of Music he developed a close association with the Twentieth Century Ensemble, founded at the same time as the studio by Edwin Roxburgh. Casserley was in charge of the sound for many important Ensemble events, including the UK premieres of Stockhausen's "Mixtur" and "Trans", and performances of many other works by Berio, Halffter, Lambert, Gehlhaar and others. He was also instrumental in creating the electronic portions of scores by other composers, notably Edwin Roxburgh's "Saturn" and John Lambert's "Sea Change" cycle.

In the 70s he worked on a number of electronic design projects, including a design for a low-cost, microprocessor-based polyphonic synthesiser. By 1980 he was working on ideas for a real time digital signal processor. This work continued throughout the 80s, during which he produced several interesting prototypes, but was unable to find the resources to bring them into useable form. By the early 90s he was determined to stop counting nanoseconds and get back to making music. The appearance of the IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation in 1992 gave him the chance to eat his cake and have it too!

Since that time he has used the ISPW to re-create earlier live work by himself and others, to create new work, including his own compositions, collaborative work and realisations for other composers. Most particularly he has used the potential of the ISPW to develop new approaches to performance, which are finding a particular application in improvised music.

Since 1998 he has developed his computer instruments on MacIntosh computers using Cycling74's Max/msp software. This has included instruments for performance and interactive installations. In particular, he has developed a series of Signal Processing Instruments for improvised music.

Very Short Biography

Lawrence Casserley (born UK, 1941) has devoted his professional career to real time electroacoustic music, and to the idea that live sound processing can be an instrument in its own right. In 1967 he became one of the first students in a new class in Electronic Music taught by Tristram Cary. Subsequently he became Cary's teaching assistant, then Professor-in-Charge of Studios and Adviser for Electroacoustic Music before taking early retirement in 1995 to pursue his performing career.

He is best known for his work in free improvised music, and has devised a special computer processing instrument for this work. He has worked with many of the finest improvisers, particularly Evan Parker, and is a key member of the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble. Casserley's instrumental approach to live computer sound processing is the hallmark of his work; the Signal Processing Instrument allows him to use physical gestures to control the processing and to direct the morphology of the sounds. This is the culmination of forty years of experience in the performance of live electronic music. He also works as a soloist, processing sounds from voice, percussion and self-made instruments. CDs have been released by ECM, Konnex, Leo Records, Psi, Sargasso and Touch.