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All Music Guide:
Suzanne Ciani was one of the first and finest woman artists to make a name for herself in the world of electronic music. Ciani earned a Masters degree in composition from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied with electronic pioneers Max Matthews, John Chowning, and Don Buchla. In 1975 she moved to New York, where she got involved in the Soho art scene, and also worked with minimalist Philip Glass. She began to hit the big time with the establishment of Ciani Musica, Inc., one of the foremost commercial production companies in the country. Ciani later expanded into film scoring and gained recognition for her work on Lily Tomlin's The Incredible Shrinking Woman as well as the award-winning feature documentary Mother Teresa. Ciani's career as a recording artist, however, took a more indirect route. Her 1982 Japanese release Seven Waves became an underground hit, prompting its American release by Private Music in 1984. Then Velocity of Love came along, which, with its intriguing synthesizer work balanced by strong melodies and pop sensibilities, helped define contemporary instrumental music and the burgeoning genre of new age. Ciani recorded steadily for Private through the 1980s and into the next decade, issuing the Grammy-winning Hotel Luna ('86), Neverland ('88), History of My Heart ('89), and the 1990 solo piano Pianissimo. In 1994 Ciani established the Seventh Wave imprint, and issued the orchestral album Dream Suite. Two years later Pianissimo II apppeared, followed by a live album in 1997. The title track of the 1999 album Turning featured vocals from Chyi-yu. Ciani took a break after third installment in her Pianissimo solo piano series, released in 2001. But she returned four years later with the ambitious studio effort Silver Ship.
Wikipedia:
Suzanne Ciani (born June 4, 1946) is an Italian American pianist and music composer who found early success with innovative electronic music.
Education
She received classical music training at Wellesley College and obtained her M.A. in music composition in 1970 at University of California, Berkeley where she met and was influenced by the synthesizer designer, Don Buchla. She studied computer generated music with John Chowning and Max Mathews at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Labs in the early 1970s.
Career in music
In 1974 she formed her own company, Ciani/Musica, and, using a Buchla Analog Modular Synthesizer, composed scores for television commercials for corporations such as Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, AT&T and General Electric. Besides music, her specialty was reproducing sound effects on the synthesizer that recording engineers had found difficult to record properly; the sound of a bottle of Coca-Cola being opened and poured was one of Ciani's most widely recognized works, and was used in a series of radio and television commercials in the late 1970s. Such was the demand for her services that at one point she was doing up to 50 sessions a week. Her sound effects also appeared in video games (the pinball game Xenon featured her voice). Such audio logos as the Coca-Cola pop and pour along with video game sound effects and more appear on the 2012 album Lixiviation (Finders Keepers) along with the only currently availabe excerpts from her 1975 Buchla Concert.
In 1977, Ciani provided the sound effects for Meco's disco version of the Star Wars soundtrack, which was certified platinum. She added the signature electronic "swoosh" to Afternoon Delight by the Starlight Vocal Band. At the time, the very young Ciani thought the work was just a "song about spaceships." Ciani scored the Lily Tomlin movie The Incredible Shrinking Woman, distinguishing her as the first solo female composer of a major Hollywood film; Lloyd Williams's 1975 experimental film Rainbow's Children; and a 1986 documentary about Mother Teresa, as well the TV daytime serial ("soap opera") One Life to Live. She also composed and perhaps best known for the Columbia Pictures and Columbia Pictures Television theme jingles. She has toured throughout the United States, Italy, Spain, and Asia.
In 1982 Ciani began to record albums in the New Age genre, characterized by a mix of electronic and traditional instruments. Her first album, Seven Waves was first released in 1982 in Japan, and was later released in her native US in 1984 through Atlantic Records. Her 1986 album The Velocity Of Love, released by RCA Records, featured Ciani's best known song, the title track. In 1987 she signed to the Private Music label, which released a number of albums from 1988 to 1992, including re-issues of her first two albums. Although emphasizing electronic music in her recordings, her solo piano album Pianissimo, from 1990, became her best-selling album. Ciani ended her contract with Private Music with the compilation The Private Music Of Suzanne Ciani, in 1992.
In the 1990s Ciani founded her own music label, Seventh Wave, from which she has released all her subsequent albums, which have been more classically oriented than her previous recordings. 1994's Dream Suite was recorded in Moscow with the Young Russia Orchestra, and was Grammy-nominated. 1999's Turning featured her first composition with lyrics, in the title track, sung by Taiwanese artist Chyi Yu.
In early 2006, Ciani's Silver Ship won in The 5th Annual Independent Music Awards for Best New Age Album. Ciani was also an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards' judging panel to support independent artists.
Five of Ciani's albums have been nominated for Grammy awards.
