Co-founder of the ONCE Festival and a pioneer of multimedia art since the 1950s, Gordon Mumma (born in Massachusetts in 1935) quickly established himself as one of the most prominent figures of the avant-garde. Upon arriving at the University of Ann Arbor, he distinguished himself with the extraordinary soundtracks he composed for his classmates� theatrical plays.

After his first experiments in gestural music, such as Meanwhile (1961), whose score contains the gestures performers must execute to produce sound, Mumma met Ashley and the artist Milton Cohen. Together they staged a multimedia performance that would evolve into the "Space Theatre," a milestone of electronic "light shows." Meanwhile, Mumma composed music for avant-garde festivals and various events, largely using frequency modulation. With his friends, he founded the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music (one of the first in the world) and the ONCE Festival of Contemporary Music.

Typical of ONCE performances is Megaton (1963), his most monumental work: forty minutes of deafening electronic noise produced by five keyboardists and a six-track tape. The audience is immersed in a deca-phonic sound system. After four minutes of monotonous, leaden brainwashing via a deafening drone, the lights illuminate the stage: in the center, among the audience, the musicians�spaced apart and wearing headphones to synchronize�engage with an electro-acoustic sculpture, attacking it chaotically to produce dissonant sounds. Above their heads, dazzling objects race along steel wires, contributing their metallic screeches, amplified for effect. Mumma directs the operations via headphone commands and handles the sound mixing. The lights dim, and from the darkness emerges the drone of aerial squadrons; the whine of jets rises to a dark, unbearable roar over a cascade of crackles and confused voices. A film-like score shatters the sonic documentary; in a corner under a radiant light, a man calmly and indifferently beats his drums. The overlay of improvised action-music by the stage musicians with a collage of pre-recorded effects produces a highly dramatic atmosphere. In this piece, Mumma manages to fuse a broad spectrum of experiences and techniques into a powerful sonic vision of the apocalypse.

The Space Theatre, presented in 1964 at the Venice Biennale, is a one-hour performance combining projections, sculptures, dance, and music. Mumma�s sound follows the abstract images projected on the walls. The central section is a piece of bubbling musique concr�te, framed by blocks of hisses and squeaks. The work concludes with a circle of discrete vibrations, alien pulses in unreal silence, Morse signals from interspace. Historically, it is an important piece because it bridges the older "concrete" styles with the more transcendental styles that emerged during the early 1960s.

Equally shocking are the sonic eruptions of Dresden Interleaf (1965), a requiem in memoriam of the World War II bombings, electronically recreating the sinister atmosphere and the background sounds of approaching squadrons, air raid alarms, and falling ordnance.

Then, after leaving Ann Arbor, he joined Merce Cunningham�s company (for whom in 1966 he composed Mesa, a �cybersonic� improvisation for David Tudor on bandoneon and Mumma himself at the electronic console, and for whom he would work until 1974) and participated in two productions (Ear Heart and Echo) of the Portland Dance Theatre. Interstice (a mix of orchestral sketches, synthesizers, and fireworks) and Schoolwork (for concertina, saw, and a kind of small lute) were part of the performances. Hornpipe (1967) was born from the interaction between the performer, a cybersonic device, and the resonance of the performance hall: a console connected to the French horn tuned to the hall�s feedback and reacted to the sounds produced by the instrument.

Pontpoint (1980) is another cybersonic improvisation (this time for bandoneon and multi-stringed zither). Fwyyn is a fragment of Fwyynghn (1979), an hour-long theater piece for two bandoneons (without electronic processing).

The culmination of his gestural experiments is represented by the Cybersonic Cantilevers (1973): the audience provides any music or noise as a �sacrifice� to a �cybersonic� machine that regenerates the input material according to a given process of acoustic mutation.

Mumma is the Wagner of gesturalism. His work reaches terrifying levels of drama, employing to the fullest expressive potential the few resources at his disposal. Mumma is also the only one who has always written program music, even when Dadaist provocation seemed to prevail over musical inspiration. His symphonic poems are among the most purely artistic achievements of the movement.

Live-Electronic Music (Tzadik, 2002) collects works composed between 1963 and 1985: Medium Size Mograph (1963), the first example of "cybersonic" composition (live digital processing of acoustic music), Horn (1965), Mesa (1966), Hornpipe (1967), another pioneering "cybersonic" piece, Than Particle (1985).

Studio Retrospect (Lovely Music, 2000) collects six electroacoustic works composed between 1959 and 1984: Retrospect (which collages four works from 1959-1982), Music from the Venezia Space Theatre (1964), the threnody The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945 (1965), Echo-D, the fourth movement of the dance piece Echo (1978), Pontpoint (1966-1980), Epifont (1984).

The cassette Retrospect - Schoolwork (Slowscan) adds Schoolwork (1970) and 11 Note Pieces and Decimal Passacaglia (1979) for solo harpsichord.

The cassette Truro Synodicle - Echosynodiae (Tao Particle No 4001) contains the movie soundtrack Truro Synodicle (1962) and the dance piece Echosynodiae (1978).

Mumma was professor of music at UC Santa Cruz from 1975 to 1994.

More compositions appeared on Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity (2005) and Music for Solo Piano (1960-2001) (2008).