The 2023 SEAMUS Award was presented to Suzanne Ciani at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) 2023 National Conference, held in New York City, from April 7 – April 8, 2023. Congratulations!
The 2022 SEAMUS Award was presented to Maggi Payne at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) 2022 National Conference, held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan from March 30-April 2, 2022.
Maggi Payne is a composer primarily of electronic and electroacoustic music, a video artist, and a flutist. She is a recording engineer/editor, archivist, and historical remastering engineer.
Her works are presented world-wide. She is the recipient of several awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Bourges, and received an honorary mention from Prix Ars Electronica for her video work, Apparent Horizon. Recent commissions include KRAAK, Belgium (2020); Berkeley Arts Commission for a three month outdoor installation (Immersion, Bay Area Soundscape); Francisco Lopez, for the Reina Sofía National Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid (Through Space and Time); Jacqueline Gordon, for The Lab (BAM); Seth Horvitz for the Air Texture label (In the Night Sky); Steven Miller for his CD boxed set (Beyond); and the University of Illinois Experimental Music Studio 50th Anniversary celebration CD (Electric Ice).
Her works have been choreographed by Molissa Fenley, Wendy Rogers, Carolyn Brown, Carla Blank Reed, Gina Gibney, Deborah Hay, Gail Chodera, and many others. She composed several works for digital video processor builder/artist Ed Tannenbaum’s Technological Feets performances for many years.
Works appear on Aguirre, Air Texture, The Lab, Lovely Music, Innova, Starkland, Music and Arts, New World Records (CRI), Root Strata, Ubuibi, Asphodel, and/OAR, Centaur, MMC, Digital Narcis, Capstone, Mills, and Frog Peak labels.
She began teaching electronic music at the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) at Mills College as a graduate student in 1970. After graduating with her MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media in 1972 she was hired to teach at the CCM and to be a recording engineer for the public access program. She taught recording engineering, composition, and electronic music, and became Co-Director of CCM from1992-2018. She also worked as a production engineer for a Bay Area radio station and as a historical remastering engineer for the Music and Arts label.