Suzanne Ciani: A Life in Waves

Screening with Special Guest, Producer Brett Whitcomb

Suzanne Ciani: A Life in Waves, is a richly immersive portrait of Suzanne Ciani—a pioneering composer whose work helped shape the sound of electronic music, commercial audio, and immersive performance.

Directed by Vero Majoli, the film traces Ciani’s path from experimental composer and early adopter of the Buchla synthesizer to an unlikely architect of everyday sound. In the 1970s and ’80s, her electronic compositions reached millions through iconic commercial work—most famously the Coca-Cola “pop and pour”—even as she continued to push the boundaries of electronic and spatial music in galleries, concert halls, and quadraphonic environments.

A Life in Waves moves fluidly between biography and soundscape, revealing how Ciani navigated a male-dominated industry while insisting on listening as a bodily, emotional, and spatial experience. Her later-life resurgence as a live performer—particularly her quadraphonic concerts—underscores a career defined not by trends, but by fidelity to sound itself: its texture, movement, and capacity to reshape perception.

Following the screening, producer Brett Whitcomb joins the program as a special guest for a post-screening conversation, offering insight into the making of the film, Ciani’s enduring influence, and the renewed cultural attention to electronic pioneers whose innovations are still unfolding today.