Lawrence Casserley (born August 10, 1941 in Little Easton, Essex, UK) has dedicated his career to the development of live electronic processing as an instrument in its own right. In 1952 his family moved to New York, so his later schooling and university education were in the USA. After one year at Columbia University, New York, he left in order to develop his increasing interest in music. While undertaking various employment he attended evening classes, and later part-time day classes at the Chicago Musical College, Roosevelt University, Chicago, studying composition, conducting, percussion and flute. In 1966 he received a BMus degree with a major in composition, and returned to the UK to pursue postgraduate studies in composition, conducting and percussion at the Royal College of Music, London. In 1967 he became one of the first students on the new Electronic Music course at the RCM taught by Tristram Cary. In 1970 he was invited to join the RCM teaching staff as Cary’s assistant, and subsequently became Professor-in-Charge of Studios and Adviser for Electroacoustic Music, before taking early retirement in 1995. From the 1970s onwards he led and/or performed with many live performance and/or multi-media groups, most notably Hydra (the multi-media group he formed with Eddie Franklin-White), Peter Donebauer’s VAMP (Video and Music Performers), Tube Sculpture and the Electroacoustic Cabaret. During the 1980s he collaborated with Simon Desorgher in creating the Nettlefold Festival, which later became the Colourscape Music Festival; he continues to be a Director of Eye Music Trust, which runs this festival, as well as many other events and educational projects based around Peter Jones’s inspiring inflated structures. He also collaborates with Peter Jones on interactive audio-visual installations under the title „Chromatic Harmony”. Since leaving the RCM he has focused on free improvised music, and has developed a Signal Processing Instrument especially for live sound processing in improvised music. He is best known for his collaborations with Evan Parker (CDs on Touch and psi) and his Electro-acoustic Ensemble (CDs on ECM), but has also collaborated with many other musicians for performances throughout Europe, North and South America, India and Japan. He also has CDs released by Sargasso, Leo Records and Maya Records; new releases on psi and Konnex are in preparation.
