Biography
Among enthusiasts devoted to experimental sounds, Jim Fassett gained recognition through his 1960 creation Symphony of the Birds. The piece blended the formal architecture of symphonies with the methods of musique concrète, yielding an intricate and otherworldly texture built exclusively from field recordings of birds.
Information on his formative period stays limited; accounts place his birth in 1904, after which he entered radio with appearances on Boston’s WBZ station in the late 1920s. He also wrote classical music criticism for The Boston Globe across several years.
Following his relocation to New York City in 1936, he became assistant musical director at CBS Radio while hosting the weekly intermission program tied to New York Philharmonic Orchestra performances.
CBS Radio elevated him to chief musical director in 1942, a post he held for more than two decades. As a senior executive at the country’s dominant network, he encountered postwar advances in recording equipment and began private explorations with magnetic tape, reshaping ordinary noises by varying their speed and pitch on as many as three machines at once.
He later originated Strange to Your Ears, a Sunday afternoon radio series that aired his more unconventional tape pieces; Columbia Records eventually assembled selections from those broadcasts into an album bearing the same title.
Fassett developed Symphony of the Birds in partnership with CBS technician Mortimer Goldberg, drawing on bird calls collected by ornithologists Jerry and Norma Stilwell. The pair transferred the calls to tape at altered speeds, then layered multiple playbacks onto single reels to produce the album’s dense, swirling character, which Fassett divided into three movements in keeping with symphonic convention.
The work first reached listeners via the Strange to Your Ears series before appearing on LP. He went on to complete two further projects, Scandinavia and the children’s recording Hear the Animals Sing, before retiring from CBS in 1963.
In subsequent years he wrote the travel book Italian Odyssey and resumed music criticism. He died December 17, 1986, in Stroudsburg, PA.
Information on his formative period stays limited; accounts place his birth in 1904, after which he entered radio with appearances on Boston’s WBZ station in the late 1920s. He also wrote classical music criticism for The Boston Globe across several years.
Following his relocation to New York City in 1936, he became assistant musical director at CBS Radio while hosting the weekly intermission program tied to New York Philharmonic Orchestra performances.
CBS Radio elevated him to chief musical director in 1942, a post he held for more than two decades. As a senior executive at the country’s dominant network, he encountered postwar advances in recording equipment and began private explorations with magnetic tape, reshaping ordinary noises by varying their speed and pitch on as many as three machines at once.
He later originated Strange to Your Ears, a Sunday afternoon radio series that aired his more unconventional tape pieces; Columbia Records eventually assembled selections from those broadcasts into an album bearing the same title.
Fassett developed Symphony of the Birds in partnership with CBS technician Mortimer Goldberg, drawing on bird calls collected by ornithologists Jerry and Norma Stilwell. The pair transferred the calls to tape at altered speeds, then layered multiple playbacks onto single reels to produce the album’s dense, swirling character, which Fassett divided into three movements in keeping with symphonic convention.
The work first reached listeners via the Strange to Your Ears series before appearing on LP. He went on to complete two further projects, Scandinavia and the children’s recording Hear the Animals Sing, before retiring from CBS in 1963.
In subsequent years he wrote the travel book Italian Odyssey and resumed music criticism. He died December 17, 1986, in Stroudsburg, PA.