The book functions as a guided tour through the creative process that fuels a lifelong experimental music composer. It sheds light on the compositional processes and the physical settings of the six new CDs that make up Part Three of the Emergent Music And Visual Music: Inside Studies project. Detailed program notes for every track open windows to forces that generated the music. The book also provides program notes for two more CDs of music made public for the first time, Volumes 1 and 2 of Music for The Electronic Arts Of Sound And Light (1983), a book considered by academics and professionals as a classic in the field. Associated with the notes for each of the eight CDs are essays that thematically set the conceptual stage for the music on that particular CD. The book also includes a section of special historical interest titled "Being Johnny MusicMeme", a section that features posters, programs, photos, reviews, articles, and interviews from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s connected with Pellegrino's work. Electronic arts pioneer Ron Pellegrino is a composer, performer, visual artist, researcher, and author of numerous articles and three earlier groundbreaking books-An Electronic Studio Manual (1969), the first published book on the modern electronic music synthesizer, The Electronic Arts Of Sound And Light (1983), the first published book on integrated electronic technology in the arts, and Emergent Music And Visual Music: Inside Studies (2009), the first published book on the integration of algorithmic composition and visual music. This book and the other parts (another book, 4 DVDs, and 6 CDs) of the Emergent Music And Visual Music: Inside Studies project are based on his research, composition, and performance experiences, both solo and in collaboration with hundreds of performance artists, in over 1,000 public events at art and science museums, cultural centers, and universities since the late 1960s in North America, Europe, and South America.
Pellegrino is a pioneer and leading exponent of emergent music, visual music, performance-multimedia, and music with affordable emerging technology since 1967. His work is equally at home in art, research, corporate, and academic settings. His highly diverse output is rooted in a longstanding interdisciplinary approach to music, science, technology, the visual arts, and philosophy. He has presented over 1,000 public performance-multimedia events at art museums, science museums, cultural centers, and universities in North America, Europe, and South America with funding from local artist series, the US State Department, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, state agencies, private agencies, and special endowments. He is a former faculty member of The University of Wisconsin, The Ohio State University, Oberlin College, Miami University, Texas Tech University, California State University-Sonoma, and Western Carolina University with teaching responsibilities in the departments of music, physics, computer science, art, and education as well as administrative responsibilities in the design, implementation, and educative function of electronic arts facilities. His early development as a composer was strongly influenced by his studies with master teachers such as René Leibowitz, student of Ravel and Webern; Rudolf Kolisch, student of Arnold Schoenberg; James Ming, student of Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger; and Robert Crane, student of Howard Hanson and Nadia Boulanger. His formal education includes: Ph.D. in music composition, theory, and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968; M.M. in music composition and theory from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1965; B.M. in music composition, theory, and philosophy from Lawrence University in 1958; ongoing research is conducted in the studios of Electronic Arts Productions and at seminars, workshops, presentations, expositions, and events covering emerging technology in the arts, communications, and education. He is the author of three previous major groundbreaking books: 1. Emergent Music And Visual Music: Inside Studies (Electronic Arts Productions, 2009), the first published book on the integrated natures of algorithmic composition and visual music (the book is Part One of a project that also includes, as Part Two: The DVDs, a set of 4 DVDs with videos that illustrate the principles covered in the book, as Part Three: The CDs, a sequence of individual CDs that illustrate compositional principles of emergent music, and, as Part Four: more books, CDs, and DVDs by Leading American Experimentalist in the late 20th/early 21st Centuries. 2. The Electronic Arts of Sound and Light (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983), the first published book on integrated electronic media in the arts. Hailed globally by readers and critics as "a treasure, a bible, seminal, and an inspiration". (CDs of Music For The Book are available for the first time in 2009); 3. An Electronic Studio Manual (Ohio State University College of the Arts, 1969), the first published instructional book on the modern music synthesizer (became the worldwide instructional source for the then revolutionary Moog Synthesizer). During the 1980s and 1990s, his writing and teaching vehicles integrated a combination of artist-in-residencies, his web site (a living ebook and a very early form of the blog), and targeted online discussion groups. The 2000s have been focused on the internet and the production of CDs, DVDs, and new books on emergent music and visual music.
