Warner Jepson's Music

Kiira
a piano composition for his daughter (mp3 format)

Sale of Newly Found CDs! (see below on this page)
WarnerJepson -Totentanz And Other Electronic Works 1958-1973
Contact: Matt Jepson


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1950s

SNOW ROOM by Warner Jepson (mp3 - 3:03) A child, falling sleep, imagines that the snow falling in the night outside is also falling inside his room from 1950 . I was twenty. WJ

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him describing his early days of composing in the 1960s

1960s

1961 San Francisco Burning at SF Playhouse - Music by Warner Jepson - Review

1963 Brouhaha - Music by Warner Jepson - Review

1964 Saddle the Unicorn at SF Playhouse - Music by Warner Jepson (mp3 - 5mb 3min 42sec)

Prelude and Dance (SADDLE THE UNICORN) - Warner Jepson (Amiga video - 34mb 3min 42sec)

1965 "Piece" Toy Piano concert - Robert Erickson's Music performed with Warner Jepson on piano - (Archive.org)

1965 "Piece" for two Toy Pianos and Pre-recorded Bells -- Performed by Warner Jepson on KQED - (mp3 -25 mb 19:40)

Warner Jepson playing his Buchla 100 circa 1968

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him describing his work with the Buchla Electronic Synthesizer (17mb 5min)

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him talking about his Buchla Music at Art Openings in 1960s (11mb 3min)


Audio cassette of Warner Jepson's Buchla music circa 1969 (5mb 30sec)

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Totentanz - 1967 Electronic Musical Score by Warner Jepson


Curtain call for Totentanz with Warner Jepson (the tall guy in the middle)

Color video of Totentanz performance in1967 with Warner Jepson's electronic music score.
TOTENTANZ BALLET: Carlos Carvajal's master's thesis based upon research of the Dance Macabre or Totentanz,
from the time of the Black Plague to the present. The ballet is performed by Dance Spectrum at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him recounting how he was hired to compose the music for Totentanz (19mb 3min 30sec)

Review of Totentanz by reynoldsretro.blogspot.com
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Sale of Newly Found CDs!
WarnerJepson -Totentanz And Other Electronic Works 1958-1973

To order please contact Kiira Jepson at kiirajepson@gmail.com


Warner-Jepson-Totentanz
Tracklist
 

Warner-Jepson-Totentanz-
And-Other-Electronic-Works-1958-1973

Tracklist

1-1 Bugs At Large 2:43
1-2 Blood Knot 7:27
1-3 Skate Date 0:41
1-4 Laughter After 4:37
1-5 Rirlwa 2:00
1-6 Good Humor Man 2:34
1-7 Jacks 1:36
1-8 Jail Gate Crazy 1:03
1-9 Splace 1:20
1-10 Totentanz 35:05
2-1 The Dog 1:53
2-2 For Trying Out Loud 0:42
2-3 The Big Purr 0:58
2-4 The Awakening 20:03
2-5 See Is Never All The Way Up 24:44

 




Small Sample of Totentanz and other Electronic Works 1 - 3.7 mb 20sec

Large Sample of Totentanz and other Electronic Work 2 - 15.6 mb 2min 40sec

Totentanz audio only - on Youtube

"Bugs at Large" - Youtube video art using Warner Jepson's Totentanz score

1968 The Awakening - Program

1968 The Bed - Electronic Music Score by Warner Jepson from James Broughton's Film (mp3 - 9mb, 6min 42sec)


1969 Buchla Christmas by Warner Jepson

Composed, Arranged, and Recorded by Warner Jepson at Mills College Electronic Music Studios, Oakland, California. December 1969.
Composed on the Buchla 100 Analog Modular Synthesizer. Recorded to Ampex PR-10 Tape Recorder. 

"MOMA asked me to provide music for their annual Christmas party for Children on a Saturday morning. So I took off one evening for Mills College where the Buchla now was kept... The Buchla doesn't' have a keyboard like a piano (with twelve notes to the octave), just slits in a metal plate with two tuning knobs to give each slit a pitch or a pair of pitches. I didn't have to reconstruct all twelve notes of a scale, just the notes needed in the song. Tuning what few notes I needed for each tone was fairly easy. But one carol sounded like church bells because it one of the notes sounded out of tune as some church bells because their tuning doesn't fit with a tempered tuning so goes out of tune with the other notes. At first I thought this a problem, but since it did resemble church bells it decided it added to the charm. Other sounds reminded me of lighter caroling bells as I imagined in old Germany or the Alps, at least, as I remembered hearing them. The most pleasure came when I incorporated the sequencing module that gave a tune rhythm that it never had nor would have, since it came from a synthesizer with a different kind of creativity that a human wouldn't have. The unusual rhythm added a kick to the carol. I didn't have enough carols to make a long enough session so I added here and there, especially at the end, some synthesizer music that I'd previously made on the Buchla that sounded shimmering and might evoke a starry sleigh filled night."

New! Article about Warner and Buchla Christmas; by Charles Eppley for Swingsetmagazine.com

 

1970s

1970 - "Four organs" by Steve Reich including Warner Jepson (mp3 - 42mb 18min 22sec)
An Evening of Music with Steve Reich & Musicians at the UC Berkeley Museum, (Nov. 7, 1970)

1971 - Untitled Sound Poem - commissioned for a broadcast in a radio exhibition on KPFA. (mp3 - 19mb 8min)

Illuminated Music 2 & 3 (1973) - U B U W E B - Video and Music by Stephen Beck and Warner Jepson

Illuminated Music 2 & 3 (1973) - Music by Warner Jepson MP3 sound file only (mp3 - 5mb 3min 35sec)

Year: 1973 Time: 28 mins Music: Warner Jepson
A classic in audiovisual experimentation, Illuminated Music was a series of live performances by Stephen Beck (visuals) and Warner Jepson (music) in which the artists reworked pre-made compositions directly before an audience. I'd that say that Jepson's music is far richer and more engaging than the visuals (perhaps as a result of the greater possibilities of the Buchla synth and the deeper theoretical and practical range of electronic music at the time) Illuminated Music is unsurpassable in its historical significance as an early experiment in live electronics. Eye of Sound

 

1972 Apr 8 "N. R. A." Premiere, tape collage for SF Ballet, SF Opera House - review SF Chronicle

Video clip 1 from Warner Remembers by Matt Jepson: featuring tape machine audio from "N. R. A."

Video clip 2 from Warner Remembers with his recollections of early tape machine audio creations

 

1980s

Warner Jepson's original Amiga Computer songs here are MP3 files taken from the videos of each song which
Warner uploaded to You Tube. The Videos of each song with musical notation can be found on the Video page.

Bunzhi
Judy Jolly
Native Run
Chambo
Ice Box Nice Box
Prelude and Dance (SADDLE THE UNICORN)
TIME MACHINE Prelude, the machine, flight and fall

SingSungBoogie
TostTest
The Knight Errant
Ya Feel It

The Money Tree - Musical composed by Warner Jepson - 1987
for the Lehman Engle Musical Theatre Workshop, Los Angeles CA

clip 1 Warner Jepson's music - The Money Tree - rehearsal 4 min 9secs
clip 2 Warner Jepson's music - The Money Tree - rehearsal 2min 23 secs

 

1990 - 2011

Audio Mp3s of Warner Jepson's musical compostions performed by himself with accompaniment.
(Videos of the same songs can be found on the video page)

Remembered
Kiira
When Heaven was Hot!
Not Much Doin'
What If
Painsong

Monarchs on the Move - Warner Jepson in Robert Pacelli video (7mb 1min 20sec)
Warner and I - Warner Jepson in Robert Pacelli video (7mb 1min 20sec)
Warner AVI - Warner Jepson in Robert Pacelli video (24mb 2min 33sec)

New appreciation of Warner's Music

NE155: An Exclusive Mix By… Alessandro Cortini

July 15, 2014   NEEDLE EXCHANGE

Warner Jepson – The Big Purr / Bugs At Large / Blood Knot
"My friend Mitchell Brown at KXLU released an incredible double CD with a lot of unreleased works by Warner Jepson, a lot of which were done on the Buchla 100. I much prefer Warner’s use of the instrument compared to Morton Subotnick’s. (Mort’s 200 works are my favorite though!) I feel Warner Jepson really pushed the 100 to its limits." Alessandro Cortini : keyboardist with Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails


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Charles Eppley's "Union Pole Mix - July 2014"

Charles Eppley is a sound enthusiast and art historian from Brooklyn, NY  -  charleseppley.com

10 Warner Jepson - Totentanz

Silent Night: Warner Jepson's "Buchla Christmas" (1969)

"I have published an editorial on the pioneering electronic musician Warner Jepson (1930-2011) at Swingset Magazine. Jepson was an early member of the renowned San Francisco Tape Music Center, and one of the earliest musicians to use the Buchla 100 modular synthesizer. In this piece, I discuss an off-the-cuff recording of Christmas carols made for an annual holiday party at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1969." Charles Eppley 

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