The Computer Music Center at Columbia University is an innovative and exciting music and arts technology facility with a long history of creative excellence. The center is housed in two separate facilities: one in Dodge Hall on the main Columbia campus (1 train to 116th St.), and another, larger facility on the third floor of Prentis Hall at 632 W 125th St. (1 train to 125th St.).
There are many opportunities for involvement in CMC activities. Students, researchers and creative artists working at the Center come from many different divisions within Columbia University. The primary mission of the CMC is to operate at the intersection of musical expression and technological development, and as a result the Center has become involved in a broad range of interesting projects. The CMC has also produced events aimed at reaching out to a wider community, both locally in New York and globally in a number of different international venues.
The CMC’s classes are open to qualified undergraduate and graduate students in all departments of the University. In addition, a number of guest composers and researchers have come to the CMC from all over the world to take advantage of our unique expertise and facilities.
“Some time in the fall of 1951 a professional Ampex tape recorder arrived to the Department of Music at Columbia University. For several weeks it sat in an imposing packing box under one of the tables without revealing its potential threat to invade the traditional assumption that music is conceived in terms of musical instruments and that composer’s obligation ends with presenting a performer or a group of performers with a score which accurately represents his composition. A tape-recorder was, after all, a device to reproduce music, and not to assist in creating it. Having been bought at my instigation to serve in this intended function, it awaited my pleasure to be unpacked. Little did I know that opening the lid of the packing box produced an effect akin to that of Pandora’s box. Having been asked on several occasions to describe the effects of this unsettling experience on my creative life (my wife could tell a lot, if asked, on how it felt to live in a company of three tape recorders in a living room) I find it best in this particular instance to restrict myself to a recounting in a most direct way the evolution of my approach to the opportunities to compose music directly in sound. I must insist that what I have done is music to me; it has been kindly received by a good many people whose opinion I respect.” —Vladimir Ussachevsky