Ramon Sender

Not to be confused with Ramón J. Sender.

Ramon Sender at Arion Press in San Francisco, 2011

Ramon Sender Barayón (born October 29, 1934 in Madrid, Spain) is a composer, visual artist and writer. He was the co-founder, with Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1961.

Education

He studied piano with George Copeland, harmony with Elliott Carter, counterpoint and fugue with Harold Shapero (1948-51). Sender attended the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome and Columbia University where he studied with Henry Cowell. He also studied with Robert Erickson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (1959-62) and at Mills College where he studied with Darius Milhaud. Sender holds a B. Mus from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and an M.A. from Mills College

San Francisco Tape Music Center

Sender co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1961 with Morton Subotnick and also collaborated with composer and visual artists including Pauline Oliveros, Tony Martin, Joseph Byrd, Terry Riley, William Maginnis and many others until 1966 when it was incorporated into Mills College. It was later named the Mills Center for Contemporary Music and continues to function today .

Sender participated with Don Buchla in the design of the Buchla Box. It was the first commercially available synthesizer built on the West Coast predating the Moog by a few years.

Morningstar and Wheeler (Ahimsa) Ranches

In 1962 Sender became the first resident at Lou Gottlieb's Morning Star Ranch (Sender has referred to himself with the name Ramon Sender Morningstar at times) open land commune which evolved into a Digger Farm/open land commune in 1967. After the residents' homes were bulldozed by Sonoma County authorities three times, he moved into the Wheeler (Ahimsa) Ranch. both in Sonoma, California where he lived and worked until 1973 (all 60+ homes were destroyed in 1974 by county bulldozers).

One of the residents there was Alicia Bay Laurel, writer and musician known for her 1970 best seller ‘Living on Earth’. He collaborated with her on another book, ‘Being of the Sun’ which contains information about homemade music, drones, modes and open tunings as a means of spiritual growth as well as information about yoga, creating ritual and forming intentional communities.

In January, 1966, he co-produced the Trips Festival, with Ken Kesey and Stewart Brand, a three-day event that, in conjunction with The Merry Pranksters, brought together the nascent hippie movement for the first time.

Sender is also a visual artist whose visual works are sampled on his web site and in a book, "Barayon", a Catalog of Prints, Drawings, Original Art by Ramon Sender Barayon, 2009. The book is based on a one man show at the Galley Sanchez in 2008.

After the death of Sender’s daughter ‘Xavie’ in 1989 he founded the Peregrine Foundation (for people "living in or exiting from experimental social groups"). He was the administrator of the foundation until 1999.

Sender identifies himself as a "transcendental, post-monotheist hippie pagan sunworshipper, with one foot planted in the nondual teaching of Candice O'Denver and the other in the Archaic Revival culture.".

Writings

To distinguish himself from his father Ramon J. Sender, a well known Spanish novelist, he uses the Spanish-style name Ramon Sender Barayon. This is also to honor his late mother Amparo Barayon.

Sender’s novel, ‘Zero Weather’ was published in 1980. He has several other unpublished manuscripts and some of his short stories are published on the internet. In 1989, Sender published Death in Zamora, a book investigating the execution of his mother by Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Most recently, he has published an anthology of his short stores and essays, titled "A Planetary Sojourn". He also wrote a novel based on his experiences at the Tape Music Center entitled, ‘Naked Close Up’ which is in press.

Music

• Donkey Gruntler Serenade, audience participation on Donkey Gruntlers with pre-recorded tape - 2003
• Aidan's Gamelan (in memory of Lou Harrison), audience participation on tuned water drums with pre-recorded tape - 2003
• Seashore Snake Sizzle," audience participation on rattles with pre-recorded tape - 2003
• Audition for two open-tuned autoharps and dalruba - 1982
• Great-Grandpa Lemuel's Death-Rattle What-In-Tarnation Reincarnation Blues, dixieland band, accordion, tape, 1981
• A Tewa Prayer, mixed chorus, 1978
• I Have a Dream, mixed chorus, 1978
• Loopy Gamelan "Oh 'C' Can You Say", for Oakland Children's Chorus, 1976
• Loopy Gamelans on 'A' and 'B' for four performers, 1976
• 64 I Ching Chants (instructions) – 1976
• Outdoor Music" for Four Open-tuned Autoharps - 1970
• Enoughing," tape, 1968; "Ushas," tape, 1968; "Xmas Me," tape, 1968
• In the Garden, clarinet, viola, projections and tape, 1965
• Desert Ambulance, amplified accordion, voice, 3-track tape, projections, 1964
• Balances," amplified str qt(with db), 1964
• Tropical Fish Opera, 4 instruments, 1962
• Time Fields for sextet, 1962 (Pacifica Directors Award, 1963)
• Traversals," tape, 1961
• Kronos, tape composition (approx 15 minutes), 1962
• Kore, tape, 1961
• Four Sanskrit Hymns, 4 singers, 4 cellos, double bass, harp, piano, celesta, 3 percussionists, tape, 1961

Recordings

• ”Music from Mills”, an anthology which contains a short excerpt from his, ‘Audition’ (1986, Mills MC 001)
• Worldfood (2004, Locust 55)
• Desert Ambulance (2005, Locust 70)
• Various works included on the DVD published with the book in David Bernstein’s, “The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960’s counterculture and the avant-garde”

Books

• Being of the Sun (1973) with Alicia Bay Laurel
• Zero Weather (1980)
• The Guide to Everywhere (1988), a hypertext CD-ROM
• A Death in Zamora (1989)
• Catalog of Prints, Drawings, Original Art (2009)
• Planetary Sojourn (2010)
• Naked Close Up (in press)

See also

• Ramón José Sender

External links

• Personal web site
• Peregrine Foundation