~ICMC 2015 - Sept. 25 - Oct. 1, 2015 - CEMI, University of North Texas
Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music
Douglas Geers
Brooklyn College,
City University of New York
[email protected]
Nicholas R. Nelson
Graduate Center,
City University of New York
[email protected]
Red Wierenga
Graduate Center,
City University of New York
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
The Center for Computer Music at Brooklyn College has a
history dating to the 1970s. Now the Center is preparing to
move into new facilities and launch two new MFA programs-one in Media Scoring and one in Sonic Arts.
Through all this, we continue to reflect on how we may best
serve our students, in terms of curriculum, technology, and
mentoring.
1. INTRODUCTION
Brooklyn College is one of the senior campuses of the City
University of New York (CUNY), the public university system of New York City. The electronic music studios at
Brooklyn College came into existence in the mid-1970s,
with a focus on analog modular synthesizers. The studios
were re-designated the "Center for Computer Music" shortly
after composer Charles Dodge joined the faculty in 1978
(see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Composer Charles Dodge circa 1980.
Charles Dodge had completed his doctorate at Columbia
University and had been active at the Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Center. Under his leadership the Brooklyn
College Center for Computer Music (BC-CCM) acquired its
own computers and grew to be one of the leading computer
music facilities in the United States by the mid-1980s. Of
particular note are the many composers who worked in residence there during this period, including John Cage, and
Copyright: ~2015 D. Geers et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0
Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
those who taught and attended BC-CCM summer workshops, such Jean-Claude Risset. (Interested readers may see
the complete list at our website, http://www.bc-ccm.org.)
Another noteworthy outcome of this period was the textbook that Dodge co-authored with researcher Thomas Jerse,
Computer Music: Synthesis, Composition, and Performance.
After Dodge's departure from Brooklyn College in the
early 1990s, subsequent Directors of the Center have included Noah Creshevsky, George Brunner, Douglas Cohen,
Amnon Wolmon, and current Director Douglas Geers.
2. PERSONNEL
The BC-CCM has several associated full-time faculty:
Douglas Geers, composer and Director; Douglas Cohen,
composer and Associate Director; George Brunner, composer and Technical Director; David Grubbs, composer; and
Marianne Gythfeldt, clarinetist. Faculty from other departments including TV/Radio and Computer and Information
Science, as well as the Performance and Interactive Media
Arts (PIMA) program have also been affiliated with the BCCCM. In recent years we have also been honored to have
Morton Subotnick teach as an adjunct Professor for us each
semester, including composition lessons and occasional
seminars. Currently, the Center has additional teaching
support from Ph.D. candidates Nicholas R. Nelson, Red
Wierenga, and Jacob Sachs-Mishalanie, as well as technical
support from teaching assistant Matthew Gantt. We anticipate hiring two new full-time faculty in coming years as our
MFA programs (detailed below) grow to full enrollment: the
first will be a specialist in Media Scoring (cinema, TV, video games, etc.) and the other a composer and/or researcher
in Sonic Arts. We are also hopeful that we may hire an additional full-time technical support staff member as our programs expand.
3. NEW GRADUATE DEGREES
3.1 Rationale
Brooklyn College already offers bachelor's and master's
degrees in music composition, and students can continue to
work with us as Ph.D. composition students at the CUNY
Graduate Center. Although all of these students may take
BC-CCM courses, up to now we have not had any degrees
specifically related to technology. With the addition of
Geers to the faculty in 2009, discussions began about some
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