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Five Grammy nominations, ad jingles you grew up with and the first female composer of a major Hollywood film – meet Suzanne Ciani, one of the most innovative electronic artists of our times.
In a career spanning almost 50 years, Suzanne Ciani has distinguished herself as one of electronic music's true pioneers. A woman who made the legendary Buchla synthesiser her own, she forwent the harsh drones of her contemporaries for sounds that fizzed and flowed, drawing out the otherworldly possibilities of analog music. She created the Coca-Cola bubble sound, worked with Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music, released more than a dozen critically acclaimed records and has influenced a whole generation of musicians – and yet never found the fame of her male peers.
Filmmaker Brett Whitcomb's nostalgic and joyous A Life in Waves lets the still incredibly active Ciani tell her own story, from her earliest experiments through to her multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns, trendsetting record label and adventures in the 1970s New York electronic scene. Through it all emerges a portrait of a woman who carved her own path through a male-dominated world, believing in a unique artistic vision and fighting for the success she deserved.
