A Brief Biography

I've enjoyed a varied career that's included graduate study and teaching in the history of ideas at York University; performing, producing and composing music alone and with a variety of talented artists; writing and editing for national magazines; and working in creative, technical and managerial roles in bringing the publishing industry into the electronic era in print, and, more recently, onto the internet. During that time I've remained active in photography and image-making, as well as writing and performing and recording music.

See my New York Times movie biography - yes, it's true, there's a one-liner about my soundtrack for a best-forgotten 1979 horror film. Interestingly, you'll also find some of my film soundtracks listed in the Internet Movie Database - but I've been spliced together in the same biography with a "Handsome Dutch actor, dancer and choreographer" also named John Kuipers and born in Soerabaja, Indonesia, in 1937. The composing credits in the biography are in fact mine, but the acting credits are his. Isn't it wonderful the way the internet has brought us together in this strange way?

After working on several other projects for the National Film Board of Canada, I scored a film called Gulfstream for filmmaker/naturalist William Hansen and the NFB. It's available on DVD from the NFB, and won an award at the International Scientific Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro.

In the late '70s, in addition to writing modest amounts of music for film, TV and dance, I was performing with various ensembles based in Toronto, including some memorable collaborations with Chilean artist/musician Juan Pablo Orrego, taming the patch-monster synthesizers of the era in the electroacoustic trio Waveband with Michael Brook and Gordon Philips, and later in the art/music/video collective Keen, with Fred Gaysek and John Tucker.

In 1977, after experimenting with the haunting, eerie sounds produced by bowing, striking and otherwise exciting glass bowls, wineglasses and other sonic silicates, Juan Pablo Orrego and I founded the Glass Orchestra together with some equally eccentric Toronto musicians, including Marvin Green, Miguel Frasconi and Paul Hodge. We performed music on nothing but glass instruments - from the ethereal, unearthly sound of wine glasses bowed with wet fingers to glass marimbas, gongs, and other percussion, sound effects and wind instruments. Read about it in the Canadian Encyclopedia/Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. We recorded an LP, The Glass Orchestra (1978, Music Gallery Editions WRCI 1551 LP) - on clear vinyl, what else? - and there's an article based on my original liner notes here. There's a photo of a 1980 TV performance in West Berlin here - that's me on the far right.

By the late 80s and early 90s, a fruitful collaboration with Greg Antonacci as the pseudoband Cargo Cult had resulted in a series of ethnic-electronic pop recordings.

More recently, I've composed and recorded a number of solo guitar and ensemble pieces in a more classical and Latin vein, and am currently working on The Long Way Home, an album of big-band electronica. I'll be uploading a few tracks from that project here soon - stay tuned.

Meanwhile, though, my nephew, Gabe Antonacci, is a ferociously talented actor and songwriter/musician, and I was thrilled to be part of his new CD, Breathe In (2010). You can listen to a few tracks here: myspace.com/antonaccigabe. Gabe's doing vocals, bass, some keyboards and guitar, while his dad, Greg Antonacci, plays drums, more guitar and also did the engineering and mastering. I added some keyboards, electronic effects and guitar bits, and designed the cover. Check it out!

And, of course, the relentless pursuit of images and oddities continues.

Thanks for visiting my site, and for the opportunity to share my obsessions. A special thanks to my wife, the painter Mary Lou Kuipers, for her constant creative inspiration and support. Visit her website: mlkart.ca. And thanks also to my cousin and brother Sieger Zoutman for his valuable help with the Dutch version of this site.

Please email your comments or inquiries to: john@johnkuipers.ca