British Columbia, California
Born 1935,Framingham, Mass.
I was always constructing, building, and composing things. Music: I learned solfage and 5-line staff music-notation, beginning around six years of age, and was an active choir-boy. (That was standard in the 1940s public school education curriculum.) My electronic-design activity developed with subverting things I took apart and rebuilt.
I compose both for myself and for others. For myself I often develop compositions for me to perform. For others it is nourishing by having a time-and-place target, sometimes collaborating with other creative artists.
The compositional process: I usually define and limit my resources, establishing fields of relationship choices for those resources. Those "fields" can be both macro- and micro-structured ideas, each with usually clear design concepts. I adjust those concepts to special circumstances.
These processes are relevant for both my electronic-music composition and my composing for acoustical instruments with live-performers. My concept of "fields" for creative activity makes possible discovery along the process-way, with a minimum of getting lost. Nothing's perfect.
Artistic collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Pauline Oliveros, Yvonne Rainer, Frederic Rzewski, Christian Wolff, and many others.
1966-76 Performer with Sonic Arts Union (Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Alvin Lucier)
1966-74 Composer-musician with John Cage and David Tudor, Merce Cunningham Dance Company; composed four commissioned works
1969-70 Engineering design in collaboration with David Tudor for electronic music live-performance system at EXPO-70, Osaka, Japan
1953-66 Co-founder with Robert Ashley, Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music and Once Festivals of Contemporary Music, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1999 Jean Macduff Vaux Composer-in-Residence, Mills College, Distinguished Visiting Composer, 1989, Darius Milhaud Professor, 1981
1975-94 Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz
1985, 1987 Visiting Professor, University of California, San Diego
1970s Cursos Latinoamericanos de Musica Contemporanea (Argentina, Uruguay, and elsewhere)
Studio Retrospect Lovely Music Ltd. LCD 1093 RETROSPECT (1959-82) MUSIC FROM THE VENEZIA SPACE THEATRE (1964) DRESDEN INTERLEAF (1965) ECHO-D (1978) PONTPOINT (1966-80) EPIFONT (1984)
Live Electronic Music Tzadik TZ 7074 THAN PARTICLE (1985) (William Winant and Mumma) HORNPIPE (1967) (Mumma) MESA (1966) (David Tudor and Mumma) HORN (1965) (ONCE ensemble) MEDIUM SIZE MOGRAPH 1963 (Robert Ashley and Mumma )
Music from the ONCE Festival New World Records 80567-2 SINFONIA FOR 12 INSTRUMENTS & TAPE (1958-60) MEANWHILE A TWOPIECE (1961) (Robert Ashley and Mumma) FROM GESTURES II (1958-60) (Robert Ashley and Mumma) LARGE SIZE MOGRAPH 1962 (Larry Leitch, piano) A QUARTER OF FOURPIECE (1962) (Hartt Chamber Players) GREYS (1963) (electronic music for Scavarda Film/Score)
David Tudor & Gordon Mumma New World Records 80651-2 4 MOGRAPHS (1962-64) (Tudor and Mumma: piano 4-hands, 2-pianos) GESTURES II sections X & 7 (1960-61) (2 pianos) SONG WITHOUT WORDS (1996) in memoriam David Tudor (Mumma)
Electronic Music of Theatre & Public Activity New World Records 8063-2 MEGATON FOR WM.BURROUGHS (1964) (ONCE Group) CONSPIRACY 8 (1970) ( co-composed with Stephen Smoliar ) CYBERSONIC CANTILEVERS (1973) (Mumma & public ensemble) CIRQUALZ (1980)
Piano Solo Music (1950-2001) New World Records 80686-2 JARDIN, 9 SONGS WITHOUT WORDS, SUITE FOR PIANO, GRAFTINGS, FOUR PACK PONIES, BASKET OF STRAYS, 19 FROM THE SUSHIBOX, SIXPAC SONATAS, THREESOME, ELEVEN NOTE PIECES & DECIMAL PASSACAGLIA, LARGE SIZE MOGRAPH 1962 ( Daan Vandewalle, pianist)
Roughed Trade Alga Marghen, Italy VECTORS (1959) ECHOSYNODIAE (1972-79) STRESSED SPACE PALINDROMES (1976-82) AMBULARE (1999) TRUROSYNODICLE (1961-62) (music for Cohen & Manupelli film LOVE IN TRURO)
Piano-solo music published by C.F. Peters.
2001 "John Cage as Performer," in John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art, ed. David W. Bernstein and Christopher Hatch. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
1986 "Sound Recording in the United States," The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, Vol. 3, ed. H.W. Hitchcock and S. Sadie. New York: Macmillan.
1977 "Five Composers' Views," in An Ives Celebration--Papers of the Charles Ives Centennial, ed. H.W. Hitchcock and V. Perlis. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
1975 "...from Where the Circus Went...," in Merce Cunningham, ed. James Klosty. New York: Dutton; rpt. in Koln: Neuland Musikverlag, 1980; and in Merce Cunningham, ed. Germano Celant. Milan: Ed. Charta, 1999.
1974 "Live Electronic Music," in The Development and Practice of Electronic Music, ed. Appleton and Perera. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
1976 "Gordon Mumma," performances and interview in Music with Roots in the Aether, Video Portraits of Composers and Their Music, one of seven 2-hour VHS programs produced and directed by Robert Ashley, Lovely Music.
2000 MILLS COLLEGE Vaux composer in residence with retrospective concert
