The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) is a nonprofit US-based organization founded in 1984 that aims to promote the performance and creation of

electro-acoustic music Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instrumen ...

in the United States. In particular, the organization aims: *To encourage the composition, performance of, and research about electro-acoustic music in the United States *To foster a network for technical and artistic information exchange *To attract a wide diversity of members (i.e., practitioners of a diversity of experimental practices and practitioners manifesting a diversity of racial and gender identities and ages) from both in and outside of academic institutions *To seek to remove structural and economic barriers to the creation, performance, documentation, and dissemination of electro-acoustic music *To share SEAMUS activities with members, and with the larger artistic and academic communities SEAMUS ( ) comprises composers, performers, and teachers of

electroacoustic music Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instrumen ...

representing every part of the United States and is known for its annual conference, which provides a venue for the presentation and performance of electro-acoustic music from around the world. The organization was formed in 1984 as a U.S. chapter of the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music ( ICEM) which had been formed 2 years prior in Bourges, France. The U.S. representative to ICEM,

Jon Appleton Jon Howard Appleton (January 4, 1939 – January 30, 2022) was an American composer, an educator and a pioneer in electro-acoustic music. His earliest compositions in the medium, e.g. "Chef d'Oeuvre" and "Newark Airport Rock" (1967) attracted at ...

, suggested to composer

Barry Schrader Barry may refer to: People and fictional characters * Barry (name), including lists of people with the given name, nickname or surname, as well as fictional characters with the given name * Dancing Barry, stage name of Barry Richards (born c. 19 ...

the formation of such a chapter in 1983 and the inaugural meeting was held at the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

in November 1984. Significant supporters have included CalArts,

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

, and The Alexander Family Foundation.

Current board of directors

*President: Elizabeth Hoffman *Vice President of Programs: Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh *Vice President of Membership: Abby Aresty *Member-at-large: Eli Fieldsteel *Treasurer: Margaret Schedel *Secretary: John Gibson *Director of Communications: Mark Vaughn *Director of Recordings: Scott Miller *Director of Technical Development: Becky Brown *Diversity Officer: Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner *Editor, Journal SEAMUS: Drake Anderson *Editor, SEAMUS Newsletter: Jiayue Cecilia Wu *Immediate Past President: Ted Coffey

Conference and awards

In 1987, the society began giving the

SEAMUS Award The SEAMUS Award (renamed from the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award) acknowledges the important contributions of its recipients to the field of electroacoustic music. The recipient is selected by the Board of Directors of SEAMUS. The prize was fi ...

to acknowledge people who have made significant contributions to electro-acoustic music. The award is presented at the SEAMUS National Conference, held annually. SEAMUS has also, in cooperation with

The University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, established a national archive for electro-acoustic literature and compositions. The society also established EAMM (SEAMUS Electro-Acoustic Music Month) which is a worldwide celebration of electronic, computer and electroacoustic music which occurs in November of every year.

List of SEAMUS Award Winners

*2022

Maggi Payne Maggi ( or ) is an international brand of seasonings, instant soups, and noodles that originated in Switzerland in the late 19th century. The Maggi company was acquired by Nestlé in 1947. History Early history Julius Maggi (1846–1912) ...

*2020

Annea Lockwood Annea Lockwood (born July 29, 1939, in Christchurch, New Zealand) is a New Zealand-born American composer and academic musician. She taught electronic music at Vassar College. Her work often involves recordings of natural found sounds. She has a ...

*2019

Gordon Mumma Gordon Mumma (born March 30, 1935, in Framingham, Massachusetts) is an American composer. He is known most for his work with electronics, many devices of which he builds himself, and for his performances on horn. Biography Mumma entered the Univer ...

*2018 Scott A. Wyatt *2017

Carla Scaletti Carla Scaletti (born April 28, 1956) is an American harpist, composer, music technologist and the inventor of the Kyma Sound Design Environment as well as president of Symbolic Sound. Biography Carla Scaletti was born in Ithaca, New York. She g ...

*2016

Pamela Z Pamela Z (born 1956) is an American composer, performer, and media artist who is best known for her solo works for voice with electronic processing. In performance, she combines various vocal sounds including operatic bel canto, experimental ex ...

*2015 Dave Smith *2014

*2013

Laurie Spiegel Laurie Spiegel (born September 20, 1945) is an American composer. She has worked at Bell Laboratories, in computer graphics, and is known primarily for her electronic-music compositions and her algorithmic composition software ''Music Mouse''. Sh ...

*2012

George Lewis George Lewis may refer to: Entertainment and art * George B. W. Lewis (1818–1906), circus rider and theatre manager in Australia * George E. Lewis (born 1952), American composer and free jazz trombonist * George J. Lewis (1903–1995), Mexica ...

*2011

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

*2010

Curtis Roads Curtis Roads (born May 9, 1951) is an American composer, author and computer programmer. He composes electronic and electroacoustic music, specializing in granular and pulsar synthesis. Career and music Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Roads studied com ...

*2009 Larry Austin *2008

Miller Puckette Miller Smith Puckette (born 1959) is the associate director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts as well as a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, where he has been since 1994. Puckette is known for auth ...

*2007

Joel Chadabe Joel Chadabe (December 12, 1938 – May 2, 2021) was an American composer, author, and internationally recognized pioneer in the development of interactive music systems.

*2006 Alvin Lucier *2005

Wendy Carlos Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos, November 14, 1939) is an American musician and composer best known for her electronic music and film scores. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Carlos studied physics and music at Brown University before moving ...

*2004

Barry Vercoe Barry Lloyd Vercoe (born 1937) is a New Zealand-born computer scientist and composer. He is best known as the inventor of Csound, a music synthesis language with wide usage among computer music composers. SAOL, the underlying language for th ...

*2003

*2002

Don Buchla Donald Buchla (April 17, 1937 – September 14, 2016) was an American pioneer in the field of sound synthesis. Buchla popularized the "West Coast" style of synthesis. He was co-inventor of the voltage controlled modular synthesizer along with Rob ...

*2001

Herbert Brün Herbert Brün (July 9, 1918 – November 6, 2000) was a composer, pioneer of electronic and computer music, and cybernetician. Born in Berlin, Germany, he taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1962 until he retired, several ...

*2000 Paul Lansky *1999

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Cente ...

*1998

Morton Subotnick Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition '' Silver Apples of the Moon'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the foun ...

*1997 Bebe and Louis Barron *1996 Charles Dodge *1995

Milton Babbitt Milton Byron Babbitt (May 10, 1916 – January 29, 2011) was an American composer, music theorist, mathematician, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his Serialism, serial and electronic music. Biography Babbitt was born in Philadelphia t ...

*1994

Max Mathews Max Vernon Mathews (November 13, 1926 in Columbus, Nebraska, USA – April 21, 2011 in San Francisco, CA, USA) was a pioneer of computer music. Biography Mathews studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the Ma ...

*1993

John Chowning John M. Chowning (; born August 22, 1934 in Salem, New Jersey) is an American composer, musician, discoverer, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University, the founding of CCRMA - Center for Computer Research in Music and Acou ...

*1991

Robert Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesi ...

*1990

Otto Luening Otto Clarence Luening (June 15, 1900 – September 2, 1996) was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music. Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German parents, Eugene, a conducto ...

*1989

Mario Davidovsky Mario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 – August 23, 2019) was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions ca ...

*1988

Les Paul Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype ...

*1987

Vladimir Ussachevsky Vladimir Alexeevich Ussachevsky (November 3, 1911 in Hailar, China – January 2, 1990 in New York, New York) was a composer, particularly known for his work in electronic music. Biography Vladimir Ussachevsky was born in the Hailar Distric ...

Publications

*Music from SEAMUS *Journal SEAMUS *SEAMUS Newsletter

Other international electroacoustic organisations

ACMA
—

Australasian Computer Music Association The Australasian Computer Music Association (ACMA) is a nonprofit Australia and New Zealand based organisation founded in 1989, which aims to promote electroacoustic and computer music. History ACMA was formed in 1989 as a regional organisation t ...

CEC
- Canadian Electroacoustic Community
CIME/ICEM
— Confédération Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique / International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music
DeGeM
— Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik e.V. (Germany)
DIEM
— Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music
EMS Network
- Electroacoustic Music Studies Network
EMS
— Elektroakustisk Musik i Sverige (Sweden)
EMSAN
- Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Asia Network (France - East Asia)
ICMA
— International Computer Music Association
HELMCA
— Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association (Greece)
IRCAM
— Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (France)
NEAR
— Netherlands Electro-Acoustic Repertoire Centre
NOTAM
— Norsk nettverk for Teknologi, Akustikk og Musikk
SAM
—

Sound and Music Sound and Music is the UK's national agency for new music, established on 1 October 2008 from the merger of four existing bodies working in the contemporary music field: the Society for the Promotion of New Music (SPNM), the British Music Inform ...

(UK)
60x60
—

60x60 60x60 is a collection of 60 electroacoustic or acousmatic works from 60 different composers/artists, each work 60 seconds or less in duration. 60x60 project showcases sixty new works, each sixty seconds or less, by sixty composers in a continuous ...

produced by

Vox Novus Vox Novus is a New York City-based organization consisting of composers, musicians, and music enthusiasts which presents and supports new music. Vox Novus was founded by Robert Voisey to promote contemporary composers in 2000. This organization ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Society For Electro-Acoustic Music In The United States Computer music Electronic music organizations Music organizations based in the United States Classical music in the United States Organizations established in 1984 Electronic music event management companies Festival organizations in North America