Jon Appleton
Jon Appleton (1939-2022) was an American composer of electro-acoustic music, born in Los Angeles. He taught at Dartmouth College from 1967, where he founded one of the first electronic music studios in the United States, and he worked with Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones on the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer, which led to the Synclavier, the first commercial digital synthesizer. Appleton studied at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1966 and directed the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm in the mid-1970s.
Human Music
*2024 stock* "This 1969 avant-garde collaboration between trumpeter Don Cherry and electronics pioneer Jon Appleton was originally released on legendary jazz producer Bob Thiele's Flying Dutchman label. Consisting of four compositions with the titles 'Boa,' 'Oba,' 'Abo,' and 'Bao,' Human Music finds Cherry stretching out on various flutes and African percussion instruments in addition to pocket trumpet. Original artwork. Detailed liner notes." Includes two bonus tracks, "Don" and "Jon".
At the d…
Appleton Syntonic Menagerie
Tip! *2024 stock* Jon Appleton, born in Hollywood (1939) but mainly active in New York, was one of the pioneers of electronic music. His work on Syntonic Menagerie (Flying Dutchman, 1969), and Human Music (Flying Dutchman, 1970), with Don Cherry, introduced electronic instruments to a wider audience.
Four Fantasies For Synclavier
*2024 stock* In this 1982 Folkways release, Jon Appleton plays four compositions written for the Synclavier, a digital synthesizer he helped to develop in the late 1970s. “The Sweet Dreams of Miss Pamela Beach” was recorded in a studio using a 24-track recorder to “layer” portions of the music. The remaining three pieces were performed live with “some small sections and accompaniments contained in the digital memory of the instrument at the time of performance.” Liner notes contain brief descrip…
The World Music Theatre of Jon Appleton
**2020 stock** This 1974 recording by electro-acoustic music composer Jon Appleton is designed to take the listener to different musical landscapes. Appleton notes differences in context that will make the music more and less effective (“not everything I intended will be heard by the listener because no two listeners share the same aural experiences…because we are continually expanding our aural vocabulary, the sounds used assume a different significance as time passes”). Liner notes contain a b…
Music for Synclavier and Other Digital Systems
**2020 stock** Electro-acoustic musician/composer Jon Appleton plays a variety of digital instruments which, in his words, “obtain timbres and textures which convey expressive character through my work.” Instruments used in this recording are the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer, the Synclavier, and the MUSSE of Sweden’s Stiftelsen Elektronmusikstudion Stockholm. The five pieces span the years 1974 to 1977 and include Appleton’s first digital piece “Zoetrope.” Liner notes include short introduction…
Don / Jon
Rare outtakes from early pioneering and controversial electronic jazz experiments presented on vinyl for the first time. This previously unpressed music provides and absolutely essential insight into Zen master experimental jazz outrider Don Cherry on the eve of his fertile Holy Mountain period which saw the composer combine all his well-travelled influences – such as the free music incubation of France and Germany with the traditional instrumentation of India, north and west Africa – then retur…
Contes de la Mémoire
Ten tape and electronic pieces by Jon Appleton spanning 1966 to 1996, from Columbia-Princeton and Moog III studies to the airport interviews of Newark Airport Rock and its 1996 sequel, and the Andrews Sisters collage Chef d’œuvre.