University Challenge

Last week I went to Norfolk for the day and I popped in to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts to have a look round. Its a very impressive art/artefact collection which used to be in Mr Sainsbury's bedroom (according to one of the museum's staff I spoke to). He liked Frances Bacon a lot. The building is an early Norman Foster, and it is in the grounds of the University of East Anglia. It really is an amazing campus and well worth a visit if you want to see a fantastic 1960s example of British futuristic utopia. The halls of residence are the crowning glory - crazy ziggurats designed by Denys Lasdun who also designed the National Theatre in London. What a beautiful place to spend as a student, sleeping all day long (thanks to Lyn for that joke)

I vaguely recalled that the UEA had a very important electronic music studio in the 1970s and wondered if it was still going. To my great horror I discovered that it has just closed down and the current students are the last ones to attend! It was set up in the early 1970s by Tristram Carey who purchased one of the first EMS Synthi 100s for the students to use. That machine eventually ended up in the collection of Mute records founder Daniel Miller, here he is being interviewed about it by Tara Busch:

On doing some google research on the history of the UEA studio I came across this very interesting thesis by Nicola Candlish on UK electronic music studios and the pioneering people behind them:

Nicola Candlish PhD 2012.pdf by Zack Dagoba