JONN SERRIE
In 1957, a six-year-old boy took his father's hand, walked out into the darkness of their backyard, looked up and watched with wonder as the Sputnik satellite sped across the night sky. From that moment, Jonn Serrie was hooked on the mysteries of the cosmos. His lifelong twin passions of music and aviation have led to some of the best "space music" ever created.
A pioneer and leader in the field of space music for the past 23 years, Serrie is now releasing his first "best of" collection, Century Seasons on Miramar Recordings, a two-CD retrospective containing more than two-hours of music. Primarily featuring his greatest long-form space music tracks from his previous albums, Century Seasons additionally includes two new tunes -"Deep Mystery" (which will eventually also appear on a future album, Lumia Nights) and "Andromeda Dream" (written specially for this collection). Each CD contains nine compositions with the tracks remixed and "redesigned" to blend seamlessly together so that each disc flows consistently and uninterupted.
"Space music fans enjoy lengthy experiences where they can immerse themselves totally in the voyage," explains Serrie. "The musical journey I try to create would be as if we were in a starship together moving with the solar wind across the universe seeing incredible sights with the music as the backdrop for our exploration."
Over the past few decades, Serrie has become the leading provider of space music for planetariums around the world. He has scored countless soundtracks for shows at cuffing-edge institutions such as the Hayden Planetarium in New York where he worked closely with George Lucas' company to create the first interactive planetarium show utilizing Star Wars characters. Jonn also composed music for an international expo in Spain (the Futures Pavilion received recognition as the best science exhibit), the Carnegie Institute Science Theatre in Pittsburgh, the Evans and Sutherland Flight Simulation Division of the military, the 30th Anniversary Celebration of Apollo 11 at Cape Canaveral (where Jonn's performance was televised live worldwide and where he was personally thanked by Neil Armstrong), and NASA's Coco Beach Planetarium (a concert to bring attention to the international space station). Much of this music has found its way onto his albums.
To hear, our ears need earth's atmosphere to carry sound vibrations to us. Because of the lack of oxygen in outer space, we can't hear all the multitudes of sounds out there -- sizzling suns, planets moving on their axis, enormous black holes, exploding sub-atomic particles, radiowave static, electromagnetic pulses, and perhaps even the cosmic throb of an ever-expanding universe. But the space music of Jonn Serrie can help us imagine worlds and sounds beyond our own.
Serrie's space music is mostly ambient, but with subtle bits of melody and rhythm quietly drifting in and out. The music is floating, timeless, swirling, dreamy, and cosmic. It can be as dark as deep space one moment, and as bright as a supernova the next. The music's energy derives from the feeling that it is part of an eternal, untiring, endless flow of sound. More information and music can be found at his website (www.vipinfo.com/jonn).
Born in Albany, New York, and raised in New London, Connecticut, Jonn developed his love of both music and science at an early age since his mother played piano and loved the arts while his father was a nuclear engineer with the Navy. "Moments like when I saw Sputnik as a child, and later watching the film '2001: A Space Odyssey' for the first time, were highly inspirational," recalls Serrie. He began taking piano lessons at age seven. As he entered his teens, he became an organist at his church, but also picked up guitar and began playing at clubs and school dances. His other hobby was learning about aviation and the space race (his adolescent dreams of flying never died, and in recent years he got his pilot license). His musical tastes ranged from The Beatles to Bach, but at the beginning of the Seventies, he began hearing more electronic sounds in music -
Emerson Lake & Palmer, Yes, Larry Fast, and early electronic music pioneers like Milton Babbit, John Cage and Luciano Berio.
When Jonn turned 20, he began pursuing music fulltime. During the day he demonstrated synthesizer technology for Electronic Music Laboratories, a manufacturing and research facility. At night, he performed on acoustic guitar in restaurants, bars and clubs. "I got to use EML's studio for free and everytime they developed something new, I got to immediately try it out. I used my own music for the demonstrations and offered it to the local planetarium for their shows. Soon I was involved with other planetariums, and that enabled me to pursue music fulltime."
The United States space program was soaring to new heights culminating in the "Teacher in Space"
program. There were thousands of students sitting in planetariums watching the Challenger
shuttle lift off that fateful day, but when it exploded, suddenly everything changed. "It was
incredibly sad. It had a profound effect on everyone involved with space science. To get my life
back together, I took some time off and decided to put together an album of the music I had been
creating for the Teacher in Space mission." This album, And the Stars Go With You, became one of
the best-selling and most influential recordings of space music. It was dedicated to the teacher who
lost her life in the Challenger explosion, and the music from that album was featured at the
groundbreaking ceremony for the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium.
With his next album, Flightpath, Serrie introduced more melody and rhythm to enhance the flight theme (aerobatic, fast speed, dreaming about flight, the pioneers of aviation, space flight). With Tingri, Serrie composed a musical "fairytale" set in this tiny town in Tibet 50 miles northeast of Mount Everest. "That album was more sentimental, spiritual and philosophical than my first two." On Planetary Chronicles Volume 1 and Volume 2, Jonn utilized his space music planetarium productions as he had done on his first album. For his album Midsummer Century he decided to blend space music with romantic themes. "At that point I was studying the interaction between love, time and technology so the music reflected that. I thought of the project as a far-flung science-fiction romance. I continued the adventure on IxIandia."
Serrie took a break from his original material when he recorded traditional Christmas and seasonal tunes for Upon a Midnight Clear. He followed this with Spiritkeepers in 1998, which was named "Radio Album of the Year" by New Age Voice magazine as well as runnerup in the Native American category. "I'm not of Indian heritage, but I met two Creek Indian elders living near me, and we began playing music together, both live and in the studio, which inspired me to explore this new musical direction." This also led to a duo album (Hidden World) with world music flutist Gary Stroutsos.
Serrie's music has been used by the Discovery Channel's "Wings" series, the Weather Channel, the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels, David Carradine's Kung Fu video series and many projects for international corporate events (companies such as Coca-Cola, IBM, Federal Express and AT&T). In addition, Jonn's recordings have been used in programs for meditation, relaxation, therapeutical consciousness expansion, prenatal care, healing, substance abuse recovery, hospice care, rave dance chill-out rooms, massage therapy, and heightened sexual awareness. He also set up the Jonn Serrie Galaxy Scholarship fund for students who work with electronic music.
"I try to make my music feel holographic in nature. Music is very multi-dimensional. It can lead you by the hand to an inner consciousness, or it can give you a glimpse of another part of the universe. It can be a transporter beam to other worlds, or it can simply wash over you like a gentle spring rain. It's up to listeners to decide how they want to use it."
