# Ramon Sender [Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram%C3%B3n_Sender_(composer)) ( 1934 – ) ## Description Spanish-American composer, visual artist, and writer; co-founder with [[Morton Subotnick]] of the [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]] in 1962, where he collaborated with Don Buchla and Subotnick on the design of the Buchla modular synthesizer. Left electronic music in the mid-1960s to co-produce the 1966 Trips Festival with Ken Kesey and Stewart Brand, then became the first resident of Lou Gottlieb's Morning Star Ranch open-land commune, shifting his work toward communal living, choral music, and memoir writing. ## Key Tags #sound #west-coast #institution-builder #apparatus-inventor ## Essential Works - *Kore* (tape, 1961) - early tape composition from the [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]]'s first year - *Desert Ambulance* (amplified accordion, voice, 3-track tape, projections, 1964) - multimedia work typical of the Center's mixed tape/live/projection pieces - *A Death in Zamora* (1989, book) - investigates the execution of his mother, Amparo Barayón, by Francoist forces during the Spanish Civil War ## Details Born in Madrid in 1934, son of Spanish novelist Ramón J. Sender; left Spain with his family during the Civil War. Studied piano with George Copeland, harmony with Elliott Carter, and counterpoint and fugue with Harold Shapero, then later with Henry Cowell at Columbia, Robert Erickson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and Darius Milhaud at Mills College. Built a small tape studio in the attic of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in October 1961 and organized the *Sonics* concert series there with Pauline Oliveros, directly preceding the founding of the San Francisco Tape Music Center with Subotnick the following year. After the Center's 1966 move to Mills College, Sender moved to Sonoma County, becoming the first resident of Lou Gottlieb's Morning Star Ranch commune (later Wheeler Ranch), and has since worked as a choral composer, memoirist, and visual artist under the name Ramón Sender Barayón. ### Concepts and Theories %% add concepts and theories he informed or extended %% ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Modular Synthesis]] - collaborated with Don Buchla and Morton Subotnick on the design of the Buchla modular voltage-controlled synthesizer, 1963–64 ### Collaborators - [[Morton Subotnick]] - co-founder, San Francisco Tape Music Center, 1962; co-collaborator on the Buchla synthesizer's design - [[pauline oliveros|Pauline Oliveros]] - co-organized the *Sonics* concert series, 1961, preceding the Center's founding ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements - [[San Francisco Tape Music Center]] - co-founder, 1962; built the Center's predecessor attic studio at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 1961 ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Sender, Ramón. *A Death in Zamora*. 1989. Updated ed., 2018. Investigation of his mother's execution during the Spanish Civil War, with essays by historians Paul Preston, Helen Graham, and Francisco Espinosa Maestre. Sender, Ramón. *Naked Close Up*. Intelligent Arts Publishing, 2012. Novel based on his experience at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Bernstein, David W., editor. *The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde*. University of California Press, 2008. Includes a DVD of Sender's Center-era work and institutional history of his role as co-founder.