Post about "BBC Radiophonic"

To mark the 50th anniversary in 2008 of the creation of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the programme examines the life and legacy of one of the great pioneers of British electronic music – the Workshop’s co-founder Daphne Oram.

As a child in the 1930s, Oram dreamed of a way to turn drawn shapes into sound, and she dedicated her life to realising that goal. Her Oramics machine anticipated the synthesiser by more than a decade, and with it she produced a number of internationally-performed works for the cinema, concert hall and theatre.

Daphne Oram was among the very first composers of electronic music in Britain and her legacy is the dominance of that soundworld in our culture today.

Introduced by Robert Moreby
Produced by Ian Chambers
TX BBC Radio 3, Sun 3 Aug 2008 21:45″

Via Matrixsynth

Daphne Oram, founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, died in 2003 leaving a colossal archive of reel-to-reel tapes and documents behind. This important collection of material eventually made its way to Goldsmiths College, London, who have been administering it on behalf of the Daphne Oram Trust for the last few years. The collection holds over 400 tapes made by Oram during her lifetime, and 211 of those have been archived and catalogued by the college so far.

Daphne Oram Tapes: One – Available from Amazon.com

Via Matrixsynth

“The Oramics machine is the creation of Daphne Oram, the first director of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop and a central figure in the evolution of electronic music.

‘Forget everything you’ve ever known about synthesizers. This machine has no piano keyboard or anything like that. It looks like the sort of thing that a mad inventor would make in his shed.’”

Head over to NPR’s All Things Considered for more information, an audio file and video.

Via Matrixsynth