In a groundbreaking career spanning more than half a century, American composer and musician David Borden helped pave the way for electronic music – via both analogue synthesizers and digital instruments – to be integrated into New Music/ Creative/ Classical composition and live performance. In 1969, he founded the world's first synthesizer ensemble – Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. – in Bob Moog's Trumansburg studio, working with Moog's prototypes and analogue equipment, and he later founded (1987) and headed Cornell University's Digital Music Department, inspiring new generations with digital music via Apple desktop and laptop computers. Simultaneous with his work at Cornell, Borden was a prolific composer, creating countless classical, experimental and 'beyond genre' works often performed with his ensemble. His work includes one of the most important documents of American classical minimalism: The Continuing Story of Counterpoint, a 12-part cycle that Cuneiform Records released on three CDs between 1989-1991. This 2-disc Cuneiform Records release, Make Way for Mother Mallard: 50 Years of Music, features one disc of early (1970s) and one disc of recent (2019) Mother Mallard performances of several key Borden pieces.

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STEVE FEIGENBAUM, CUNEIFORM'S HEAD, REMINISCES ON WORKING WITH DAVID BORDEN AND HIS ENSEMBLE, MOTHER MALLARD'S PORTABLE MASTERPIECE CO.:

"David Borden and Cuneiform’s relationship go back to even before Cuneiform, as I was a partner in a short-lived record label called Atmosphere that was meant to focus on electronic music and managed to put out two releases (Darren Kearns and The Nightcrawlers) before calling it a day. If my long-term memory serves me correctly, David Borden’s Anatidae was scheduled as Atmosphere’s third release, but when that label folded and as I had recently established Cuneiform on my own, it became Cuneiform’s fourth release, coming out on vinyl in 1985.

David Borden is a woefully under-valued pioneer of electronic music and a marvelous composer. We've been proud to work with him on numerous projects, including releasing his minimalist masterwork, The Continuing Story of Counterpoint, in Cuneiform's early years. Besides Borden's pioneering work in Bob Moog's Trumansburg studio, his establishing the world's first synthesizer ensemble, and his hugely important recordings, compositions and performances, Borden's remarkable accomplishments include founding and heading Cornell University’s Digital Music Program. He’s had a hugely active career and I’m personally thrilled to be able to work with Dave again on a release for Cuneiform Records' 40th year!"
 – Steve Feigenbaum, 2024

MUSICIAN DAVID BORDEN REMINISCES ABOUT 50 YEARS OF MUSIC WITH HIS MOTHER MALLARD PORTABLE MASTERPIECE CO. ENSEMBLES

“I founded Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. in the spring of 1969. I was Composer-Pianist for Dance at Cornell University but I had also been working nights for two years at the Moog Company in Trumansburg trying to understand the synthesizer for making music and possibly to use in live performance.

At first I used Mother Mallard to perform new music at Cornell because no one else was doing it. Steve Drews was the first member of my band. He was a graduate student at Cornell earning a DMA in music composition. I had already introduced him to the modular Moog Synthesizer. He took to it very quickly, whereas I had taken a long time to master it. Shortly he quit his degree program and concentrated on making music with this new electronic instrument. I was 30 and he was 23.

Our first few concerts involved asking other musicians to help and gathering amplification and sound system gear, which was new at the time for classical music. Some of the composers we presented on these early concerts were Robert Ashley, Morton Feldman, Daniel Lentz, Jon Hassell, Terry Riley, John Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and others. By 1970 Steve and I started performing with synthesizers while the MiniMoog was being invented. Bob Moog was an early supporter of the band and made sure we had the synthesizers we needed. We used the Model A Mini as well as a few portable modular models. It soon became obvious that we needed another keyboardist because all of the Moogs were monophonic (one could not play more than one note at a time, like a wind instrument.) We soon found Linda Fisher, a 21-year-old keyboardist with the Creative Act, an Ithaca rock group that composed much of its own music. Intrigued by the synthesizers, she decided to join our ensemble. She also brought her RMI Electra Piano with her, which was our only polyphonic instrument. Mother Mallard became a synthesizer ensemble playing our own compositions.

Although Bob’s synthesizers became very well known in 1968 due to Wendy Carlos’s LP Switched On Bach, and were also soon used by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, they were very expensive. Soon the MiniMoog started to make money for the company but too late to make as much money that was needed to keep the company afloat. So in the fall of 1971, Bob chose to sell his company to an entrepreneur rather than declare bankruptcy so that he could keep giving his customers technical support. Bob remained as the company’s inventor but he had to move to Buffalo, NY. It was at this time that Mother Mallard had to buy the synthesizers we used or give up the band. So the three of us invested in three modular Moogs, the MiniMoog A and a MiniMoog D. These, along with the RMI Electra Piano, gave us an instrument for each hand. The band was officially born after being together for three years.

This Moog Synthesizer band lasted until the summer of 1978 when we all decided it was time to move on. But during its first nine years, Mother Mallard gave many concerts and was managed by Performing Artservices. In 1975 Linda Fisher left the group to join David Tudor and the Composers Inside Electronics group in New York City. She was replaced by Judy Borsher, a 22-year- old Cornell graduate who had already helped us release our first LP. In 1976 Steve Drews decided he wanted to be a photographer instead of a musician, so he was replaced by Chip Smith. Chip also brought his Fender Rhodes keyboard with him. This last ensemble of Chip, Judy and me was probably the best performance group of all.

After 1978 I gave a few concerts with Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles, also known as Double Edge, a piano duo. They were also members of Steve Reich’s ensemble. But I mostly spent time with family matters and bringing up Gabe.

It wasn’t until 1987 that I formed the second version of Mother Mallard. In addition to using various kinds of synthesizers including Yamaha FM, Roland analog, and Korg sampled sounds, it included a voice—soprano Ellen Hargis, who was introduced to me by Penny Crawford, an old friend from the Eastman School of Music. We also added a wind player, composer Les Thimmig, who played several instruments. I had also known Les from Eastman days. The keyboardist was Lynn Purse, who knew how to perform on synthesizers. I met her in Virginia with her husband Bill, a guitarist. Eventually we included my son Gabe, who had become a virtuoso electric guitarist. This band lasted until 1991 and gave many American concerts, two European tours and a major concert at Town Hall in Manhattan. Our last concert was at Columbia University. Although the performers were from various parts of the country and we didn’t have much rehearsal time, it all worked because they were all well-trained professional musicians.

The 1990s were a decade I spent founding and organizing the electronic music section of Cornell’s music department. I called the project the Digital Music Program, which offered classes in making music using synthesizers with Apple Macintosh computers. The courses became the most popular ones in the music department and when I retired in 2005, it became a permanent part of the department with a tenured track position. During this time period I gave a few synthesizer ensemble concerts with various local artists but mostly I returned to my jazz roots and gave many two-piano jazz concerts with my friend Edward Murray, who was a conductor and theorist in the music department.

When Ed died in 2000 I returned to my live synthesizer music and began working with David Yearsley and Blaise Bryski. David is one of the world’s best organists and Blaise is an all-around excellent keyboardist and musician. They are both technically superior to me. This lineup often also featured Gabe as well as singer Louise Mygatt, a versatile musician who is a faculty member at the Ithaca College School of Music. This version of Mother Mallard lasted from 2000 until 2019 when we gave our 50th anniversary concerts. In 2006 I changed the live performance setup. Using Reason and Samplit software, we became a laptop-with-attached-keyboard- controllers ensemble—a computer ensemble. This made it much easier to travel. Sometimes the sponsor supplied the keyboards and we simply showed up with our laptops. But for our last concerts in 2019, we reverted back to analog using many of the same instruments as the original 1970s band. After these concerts I retired from public performing.

This double CD recording is our last one. We have been with Cuneiform Records since the 1980s. The middle Mother Mallard band recorded the entire Continuing Story of Counterpoint [released on 3 CDs by Cuneiform Records] as well as other pieces. Even the first two vinyl albums were reissued as CDs with bonus tracks. The original LPs have become collector’s items. There have also been a few other CDs on my Lameduck label.

It’s been a great 50 years with various ups and downs but it has always been fulfilling and continuously enlightening to be working with so many hard-working beautiful and generous people."
– David Borden, 2023

Make Way for Mother Mallard: 50 Years of Music press release

David Borden:
"The title SMART HUBRIS (2005) was derived from and is an anagram of Ritsu/Brahms. Violinist Ritsu Katsumata asked me to write a piece for her using the violin part from Brahms’ Violin Sonata No. 3 in d minor, Op. 108. Ritsu is primarily a performer on electric violin, so composing this piece for her, accompanied by synthesizers, was a natural choice. Ms. Katsumata was also familiar with my work as a performer with Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co., my synthesizer ensemble.

Johannes Brahms composed the violin part and I composed everything else. The idea of borrowing material from other composers and adapting it to one’s own use has been a part of music history from the beginning. In Composers at Work by Jessie Ann Owens, composer Heinrich Isaac (C. 1445-1517) is noted for his technical mastery of working with pre- composed melodies by leaving the original untouched while adding florid voices around it. Bach lifted bass lines from Handel (The Goldberg Variations) and transcribed and transformed concertos from Vivaldi. Charlie Parker kept the harmonic content of tunes by composers like Gershwin, Cole Porter and others while supplying new melodies or heads for them which totally transformed their character while giving him the needed harmonic context for improvisation.

K216.01 (2003) is, like much of my work from that era, a polyphonic composite utilizing a melodic part from another composition. In this case, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major. While there are precedents for this kind of work, it has not been in vogue since the 15th century outside of the Baroque Chorale-based pieces. Also, this is a more radical approach since it does not alter the original part in any way. These works receive their inspiration from Buckminster Fuller’s definition of synergy ( . . . behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately) and by the work of painters Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein and George Deem. Close starts with a photograph whose content and structure he then transforms into a unique painting. Some of Lichtenstein’s work (like Femme Au Chapeau) is based entirely on paintings from history. George Deem has based many of his paintings on Vermeer’s work. In addition his Art School series quotes various aspects of paintings from many artists throughout history. In all cases this method forces the use of techniques different from those normally at the artist’s command. The results are surprisingly different from the catalysts. I hope this is the case with these musical works as well."
– David Borden, 2021

A reissue of Borden's 1993 tribute to Cayuga Lake's awe-inspiring beauty.
Contemporary American classical music blending synth-minimalism and new age ambiance, transcendent vocals and visionary composition.

David Borden:
"I got the idea for these pieces after several years of running at night along the railroad tracks that follow the east shore of Cayuga Lake. I simply walked across the street from where I lived, at 1191 East Shore Drive, and ran north. In less than half a mile I was in deserted, barely accessible terrain. On the west is the lake and West Hill. Directly to the east are sheer, moderately high cliffs which now and then give way to rolling hills, gorges, and a few summer cottages. This was during the 1980s and in the early morning hours there was a sense of isolation and wonder.

My favorite time to run was between 2:00 and 3:00 am; I did it in all seasons and weather conditions. I sense that this ideal state of affairs is ending as the Ithaca-Lansing area is becoming over- developed; more and more docks appear, a marina, and homes closer to the lake’s edge and along the top of the cliffs. Already more than one of my favorite meditation spots has disappeared as trees are cut down and brush is cleared away. It’s fortunate for me that these pieces were composed before my inspirational scenes became too cluttered with man-made objects or disappeared altogether.

THE COMING OF WINTER
Along the lake, winter usually starts during the first week in November. From mid-September through October the inevitable changes take place. Leaves fall, most birds leave, vacationers take their boats out of the water and insects become quiet except for a few crickets that prevail until late October. Finally the smell of wood smoke returns and I can see my breath as I run. The terrain is mine again, as city people lock up their summer cottages. The first snowfall assures me that things will be wonderfully quiet and chilly for months to come.

LAKE ICE
Toward the end of winter, when there is still no plant life except for the pines, and no sounds of insects, large snow-dusted chunks of ice idle in the lake and thousands of smaller chips undulating in the wind-tossed water make a high soft clatter near the shore. Every once in a while I stop running to listen to the ice chips and watch the white rafts float wherever the wind carries them. The starlight, moonlight and distant city light reflected from the clouds combine to give each patch a color profile all its own. Occasionally a Canada goose shouts its approval.

SNOW GORGE WITH FULL MOON
I usually run north for two and one half miles, rest for a short time, or meditate. If I have only rested, I run the return route south for a mile, and then meditate at this small, exquisitely beautiful gorge. Unless it’s the middle of summer, there’s usually a moderate trickle of water flowing down. In winter, a small amount of water is usually flowing under the frozen cascades. From December through March, snow collects on the frozen mantle. Sometime in March, the full moon lines up with the gorge (I have to check the moon rise times) and presents one of the most trance-inducing sights I’ve ever witnessed. When this happens, I don’t meditate, but simply stare for a long time, until the earth’s rotation moves me and the gorge away from the moon; then I continue my run homeward.

FIREFLIES
The third week of June around the summer solstice is the best time to see fireflies on the lake. After running twenty minutes or so, there is a slight curve, then a segment of track about forty yards long; on each side, a border of trees and bushes. I was startled one night to arrive inside this corridor suddenly surrounded by hundreds of fireflies, each pulsing off and on at different rates and intensities. At the end of this segment of track I sat down and watched the light show for about half an hour. I did this every night for a week, then the population of fireflies thinned out and continued to do so for weeks. It became my annual private light show. This piece is dedicated to my late friend, the renowned entomologist and “father of chemical ecology” Tom Eisner.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Spring and Fall seem to be the best seasons for this phenomenon.
Although these lights in the sky do occur in the Finger Lakes area, they are not a common sight. The first thing I notice is a black, eerie, electric curtain that cloaks the northern end of the lake horizon; midway in the sky above are various colors that reach toward the apex of the sky. The colors vary from electric shades of yellow-green to blue mixed with red. When the curtain begins to dissipate, stars are visible behind transparent windows of color. The border between the black curtain and the colors resembles millions of undulating bristles. It all fades gradually back into the night; some kind of cosmic smoke.

CRICKET DREAMS
Towards the end of fall, most insects fall silent except for the crickets whose numbers keep dwindling until there are only a few left. One year, there was one lone cricket left, making sounds at a particular junction on my jogging trail near Myer’s Point. This was surprising because it was starting to get really cold. Nonetheless, this lone cricket persisted. It wasn’t until the end of the first week in November that the sometimes tentative cricket sounds stopped. This poignant sound has remained with me ever since. I still wonder whether it was the persistence of consciousness or resistance to the coming long winter sleep that kept this life form producing its natural sounds.

MIST VISIONS
One night in late October, the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The moon was almost full and I could see my breath for the first time in months. I decided to take a walk instead of run because my knee was bothering me. The first thing I noticed was how silent it was because the dip in temperature had silenced the insects. Then I saw what seemed like smoke toward the middle of the lake. The cooler air coming in contact with the warmer water was causing condensation, releasing the vapor into the night air. As I continued walking north, the mist continued to rise a little higher with the passing minutes; this appeared to happen only at the lake’s midpoint along a continuous line in a north-south direction. Over a period of an hour the mist changed slowly but dramatically to suggest different ghostly, slowly moving shapes, enhanced by the bright light from the moon. At first it looked like a small amount, then like a grayish-white bank of flames in slow motion. As the flames grew higher, angel-like figures emerged every twenty feet or so, eventually spouting undulating white wings of various sizes. Then, the angels slowly merged into a hazy, semi-transparent tree line on the water. I suppose it stayed like that for hours. I went home to bed with beautiful visions in my head.

FOG, STARS, TRAIN, WEST HILL LIGHTS
During the early morning hours, gazing across the lake, there are countless lights of different colors and intensities; some steady, some flashing. Above all, the lake is always present, reflecting the lights across two miles of water and extending out of sight, northward for forty miles. Sometimes it’s so foggy the lake is barely visible, and there are no lights to be seen, just the fuzzy whites and greys of the fog itself. Once in spring, the fog was very thick, but lifting. It made the lights from the hospital into a hazy, other worldly presence. While I was staring at it, a truck stopped suddenly above me on the slope, and I could hear the driver get out; he didn’t leave until the fog lifted and things looked normal again. Once, on my return trip, running, a bright spiral suddenly unfolded in the sky and dissolved into glowing smoke. It turned out to be a satellite burning ejected fuel before re-entry. On another occasion, over West Hill, an intensely white glowing round object one tenth the size of the moon suddenly appeared out of nowhere and except for a brief rush of air, silently traversed the sky southward surely going thousands of miles an hour before abruptly turning southwest and disappearing over the horizon. The next day’s newspaper reported a meteor instead of a flying saucer. Then there are the shooting stars, the distant street lights, ambulances, cars, buoys, occasional yachts, airplanes, the usual thousands of stars, and the moon throwing a gentle golden spotlight on the lake before the earth’s rotation affects a scene change. Once in a while, the train appears, projecting its bright searchlight into the mix. In this last piece of the series as in the first one, the running is musically audible. Just listen."
– David Borden, Ithaca, NY 1993

The title Heaven-Kept Soul is an anagram derived from the name Kathleen Supové, the pianist for whom this piece was composed. She is known for her boundary- breaking ways of dissolving the wall between performer and audience.

The piece is patterned structurally on The Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach. It has thirty variations on a theme stated in the beginning by the piano. The compositional challenge is that starting with "Variation No. 3", every third variation is a canon at a different interval. Most of the variations are composed for synthesizers accompanying an amplified piano; there are a few variations for solo piano. The synthesizer and sampled sounds have been collected on computers, mapped onto keyboards, and played using a USB keyboard controller and laptop with REASON software. Altogether, the piece requires two USB keyboard/ computer performers and one pianist.

"During the summer of 1987 Trudy and I took our son Gabriel to see guitarist David Torn perform in Trumansburg, NY at the Rongovian Embassy, AKA The Rongo. Gabe was eighteen. He had had a few years of piano lessons when he was younger, but had given them up at around age 11.

The next day, after hearing David Torn’s beautiful performance, Gabe bought a Stratocaster, and proceeded to teach himself the guitar. That is to say, he spent eight to twelve hours a day learning the instrument on his own with the help of various guitar method books he bought along the way.

About a year later, he contacted Chris Woitach, a local guitarist who now lives in Washington State, for lessons. He also discussed with me and with Les Thimmig, the woodwind virtuoso and great jazz improviser who was a member of my ensemble Mother Mallard, how best to learn about improvisation. I wasn’t much help, but Les recommended a book by Howard Roberts, the noted jazz guitarist. So Gabe added that to his daily routine or should I say marathon, because, really, from the summer of 1987 until the end of summer 1989 he spent practically all of his waking hours practicing the guitar. Many, many hours were spent methodically upping the tempo of the metronome so that he could play things perfectly at any tempo he chose, no matter how fast or slow. By the end of the summer of 1989 he sounded like a virtuoso. Actually, he WAS one.” – David Borden

"Having heard my father's pieces, especially The Continuing Story of Counterpoint (TCSOC) series, throughout my childhood, as they were being composed and premiered, I had subconsciously begun to develop my own arrangements and interpretations. The process of learning some of the parts and recording and performing them led to the conscious crystallization of these ideas.” – Gabriel Borden

Like A Duck To Water was Mother Mallard's 2nd & final release, and was originally released in 1976. The music is a unique and extremely enjoyable blend of space electronics (ala Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze), minimal music (Terry Riley, Philip Glass), and contemporary classical & electronics (Gordon Mumma, John Cage). This album showcases a uniquely American slant on synthesizer music by a band whose pioneering contributions to the genre had been forgotten until now. Includes the original album, 20' of previously unheard bonus material, and bonus CDRom material; a QuickTime video of the band in performance in 1976. With David Borden, Steve Drews & Judy Borsher.

"A marvel of pioneering electronica." - The Wire

Like a Duck to Water press release

1970-73 collects the first album by Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. and previously unreleased recordings. MMPMC were also one of the very first [possibly the first] performing synthesizer ensembles, working closely with Robert Moog, whose first factory was nearby. This material pre-dates or is contemporary with the first contributions to the genre and had been forgotten until now. With Steve Drews & Linda Fisher.

1970-1973 press release

Places, Times & People is a collection of ten medium length, mostly solely keyboard performances. It showcases a broad spectrum of Borden's compositional skills. Compositions on this disc range from piano duets, to electronic soundscapes, to dense, interlocking multi-keyboard works. Places, Times & People contains something for everyone, for all established Borden fans and newcomers alike.

The Continuing Story Of Counterpoint is a remarkable 12 part musical cycle that Borden composed between 1976-87. Lasting 3 hours, Cuneiform has released this seminal work on 3 CDs, each containing 4 parts. The music is a pleasing and highly listenable mixture of classical forms, dense textures, strict counterpoint, and high energy electronics. AUDIO Magazine had this to say about the series: "When released in its entirety, this series may stand as the 'Goldberg Variations' of minimalism, a canon of work that defines a style and an era."

The release of The Continuing Story Of Counterpoint, Parts 5-8 caused one reviewer to note that "David Borden's music has always stood alone with its logic of motion, elegance of line and form, and deft use of state of the art technology."

David Borden is one of the foremost exponents of live electronic and minimalist music. He has been active on the new music and contemporary classical scenes for two decades. He first came to attention as the driving force behind Mother Mallard, the world's first all synthesizer ensemble.