Jill Fraser

Jill Fraser (born October 11, 1952) is an American composer and electronic music pioneer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is particularly known for her longstanding work using analog modular synthesis systems. Fraser has been a prolific writer of both electronic and acoustic music for films, television and TV commercials since the 1970s. She has received Clio awards for her work with Lexus and Adidas. Early life Born in Cincinnati, OH, Jill started classical piano training at age 4. In 1962, the family moved to Chapel Hill, NC. While she was still in high school, composer Roger Hannay heard her compositions and allowed her to attend his classes at the University of North Carolina. Fraser went on to earn a Bachelor of Music degree from East Carolina University, where she studied with Otto Henry and composed her first electronic works using a Moog IIIp modular synthesizer system. At the urging of composer Morton Subotnick, Fraser left North Carolina to attend California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where she was mentored by both Subotnick and Mel Powell, and attended master classes with John Cage and Lou Harrison. During this time, Fraser composed on the Buchla modular system and worked as an assistant to Morton Subotnick, helping to create voltage control tracks for the composer's original Nonesuch Records release of "A Sky of Cloudless Sulfur." After receiving her M.F.A. from CalArts in 1978, Fraser began work at Serge Modular Music in Hollywood, where she built her first modular synthesizer system. The first Serge synthesizers had been introduced at CalArts five years earlier by composer/inventor Serge Tcherepnin. Together with Berkeley-based Don Buchla's seminal designs, these modular instruments came to define the "West coast synthesis" approach to electronic music creation, focusing on waveshaper techniques and non-traditional controllers, such as touch plates, rather than the subtractive synthesis and piano-style keyboard controllers characteristic of "East Coast synthesis."