AASE Presents: Amanda Sewell on Wendy Carlos

When

Saturday May 22, 2021: 2:00pm to 3:00pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Zoom

Description

After a meteoric rise to fame with 1968's Switched-On Bach, composer Wendy Carlos retreated from the public eye. A transgender woman, she chose to release more albums under her male birth name for over a decade. After a very public disclosure of her transition in Playboy magazine in 1979, Carlos was briefly back in the spotlight. Since then, her relationship with journalists and scholars has been tenuous. Her fans haven't fared much better: none of her music is available on streaming platforms, and she aggressively guards her copyright on YouTube. In this talk, Sewell will discuss some of the challenges of writing a biography about someone who would rather maintain complete control over how they and their music are viewed by the public. 

Amanda Sewell is the music director at Interlochen Public Radio, where she manages the station's 24-hour classical music service. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Indiana University. Amanda's scholarship has appeared in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, the Journal of the Society for American Music and the Cambridge Companion to Hip Hop. Her biography of American composer and electronic musician Wendy Carlos was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She lives in Traverse City, MI with her husband, toddler, and corgi.

Sewell will join us to talk about Carlos, her work, and her legacy in the music of today. Brought to you by the Ann Arbor Synth Expo.
 

View a video of this event here.