Silver Apples, Electric Circus, Electronic Arts, and Commerce in Late 1960s New York

It has often been a challenge to secure adequate financial and institutional support to present electro-acoustic music in appropriate physical spaces, with sufficient staffing and technical infrastructure. A handful of unusual opportunities arose in the late 1960s for partnerships between a business and artists. One of these was the Electric Circus, a discothèque in New York City, based upon an artistic conception by electronic composer Morton Subotnick in collaboration with visual artist Tony Martin. This paper explores the dynamics between artistic and commercial values at the Electric Circus and in a series of new music venues that ensued. It also offers as a counter example the highly non-commercial activity that flowed from Subotnick’s open access studio housed at New York University, sparking the careers of a group of young composers of note.