Warner's Videos

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New Video of Warner Jepson

created by his son Matt Jepson in August 2015

Warner Jepson 'In his own words'

1960s

1965 Piece for Bells and Toy Piano concert - video

 

1970s

Ascent - A Film about Mountaineering in Yosemite CA 1970

Original Electronic Music by Warner Jepson - Directed by Virginia Duncan

(these mp4 clips recommended to be played with Apple's Quicktime or Realplayer)

Ascent Film 1970 - Buchla Music by Warner Jepson clip1 (1min 10secs)
Ascent Film 1970 - Buchla Music by Warner Jepson clip2 (5min 12secs)
Ascent Film 1970 - Buchla Music by Warner Jepson clip3 (9min 4secs)

 

Luminous Procuress - Film by Steve Arnold
Electronic Music by Warner Jepson

2017 - Article about the new restoration of
the film Luminous Procuress by BAMPFA

Written by Steve Seid: "After completing preservation, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive has readied new prints for the re-emergence of Steven Arnold’s Luminous Procuress, an elusive example of early seventies mystical queer cinema, known mainly through bootlegged VHS copies and battered prints...with a soundtrack of varied musics and language ploys by experimental composer Warner Jepson. "

Excerpts about Warner from the article:
" In Luminous Procuress, Arnold goes one further, adding language but in an alienated and otherworldly way. This particular mode was actually the invention of Warner Jepson, a composer who had previously scored The Bed (1968), arguably James Broughton’s best film . The LP score is an eclectic mix of acoustic and melodic compositions playing off of a more hard-edged series of early Buchla synthesizer works. From romantic interludes to spacey drones, Jepson’s music sets the aural tempos for this symbolic journey [24]. To address several scenes that have actors in seeming conversation, Jepson constructed an intangible language, snippets of Asian and Indo-European speech. The meaning is irretrievable, the synchronization between speakers, irrelevant."

"24 Jepson also worked with the San Francisco Tape Center, Anna Halperin’s dance company, and was at the time composer-in- residence at the National Center for Experiments in Television."

Luminous Procuress scene: photo by Ingeborg Gerdes, 1970

1971 May "Luminous Procuress", feature film premieres at San Francisco Film Festival,
International Film Festival, Palace of Fine Arts, and later at the Presidio Theater on Chestnut St.

Arnold’s longest film takes viewers on a trip with two young men through strange, erotic places on a voyage towards greater sexual freedom. Like travellers in a dream, they meet a series of people dressed in exotic clothes, including members of the famous San Francisco drag troupe The Cockettes, who filled their beards with glitter and combined male and female ideals of beauty. Salvador Dalí thought it “the work of a genius” and organised a screening at the St Regis Hotel in New York. The film’s visual exuberance is in constant tension with the electronic soundtrack by American composer Warner Jepson.

1971 - Luminous Procuress - IMDB credits - Original Score by Warner Jepson

Excerpts from Luminous Procuress showcasing the original score by Warner Jepson

Video clip 1 (2min 26secs)
Video clip 2 (2min 31secs)

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him describing Luminous Procuress with scenes from the film

"The film had been all but edited when the backers decided that it needed much help from someone other than the director, as well as music. Upon hearing the recorded dialog it proved useless, badly recorded, acted, and scripted. I decided to try foreign language in its place as the film was vivid enough and was meant to be somewhat pornographic, but wasn't; simply an exotic woman, sorceress, escorting two young men to visual delights above and below ground. I took about a year at home with the film using a hand viewer to see the feature length 16mm film and to synch music for it that I composed on a small Farfisa organ I'd acquired and from my Buchla sound collection, using a Revox to make a stereo tape. I enlisted a young Israeli, a Japanese woman, a Swiss-German girl, and Italian guy to record the voices for the two sets of lover. For the sorceress I found a Russian matron to speak of anything, taking her words and splicing them or, with the Revox, recording and re-recording little snippets of words or phrases that would be impossible to speak or understand but that took on a fascinating rhythm. For a love theme I got a saxophonist, oboist, and violinist to play the written melody and used the Revox to combine them, both contrapuntally, and as a canon. I found this easier than writing a piece for many musicians that would take time, money, and much more from me than working by myself to achieve the same results. When through I had put sound to every inch of the film. There was no story, only a series of episodes, each having its separate "sound." When seeing it later in theaters I would find the sound exhausting." Warner Jepson

 

NCET - National Center for Experiments in Television - San Francisco 1973


Illuminated Music 2 & 3 (1973) - U B U W E B -
Video by Stephen Beck and music Warner Jepson

Director: Stephen Beck 1973 Time: 28 mins
Music: Warner Jepson
A classic in audiovisual experimentation, Illuminated Music was a series of live performances by Stephen Beck (visuals) and Warner Jepson (music) in which the artists reworked pre-made compositions directly before an audience. While electronic video adventures were still a novelty, live experiments, both in the visual and musical arenas, were even rarer. Beck used the Direct Video Synthesizer, designed by himself, which - so the narrator claims - allowed him to "control precisely" the visual output in the performance (the myth of control in electronic media) and, still noteworthy at the time, to create pictures without a camera. Jepson used the now famous Buchla audio synthesizer, first explored by Subotnick in his 1963 piece Silver Apples on the Moon. Though I'd that say that Jepson's music is far richer and more engaging than the visuals (perhaps as a result of the greater possibilities of the Buchla synth and the deeper theoretical and practical range of electronic music at the time) Illuminated Music is unsurpassable in its historical significance as an early experiment in live electronics. -- Eye of Sound

Clip1 about Jepson and Beck from Film "The New Wave" 20 secs
Clip2 about Jepson and Beck from Film "The New Wave" 4 min 6 secs

 

NCET - National Center for Experiments in Television - San Francisco 1972

(New) NCET - Torus Gallery - a Retrospective of Warner's works in the 1970's
using the Buchla Box Audio Synthesizer connected to the Templeton Video Mixer


Warner Jepson with Larry Templeton 2009

'Warner Remembers' - Video clip of him describing his experimental work with NCET

Here are some of Warner Jepson's experimental videos with colors and special effects never seen before that time. He usually focused the camera on his face while creating these videos in the early 1970s.

Warner Jepson's - Orange Wind
Warner Jepson's - Itchy Blue Face
Warner Jepson's - Face Behind the Lamp
Warner Jepson's - Hot Pink Guys

These videos were featured recently at the
California Video section in art exhibitions at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles

and the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in California

They are also portrayed in the book California Video: Artists and Histories

1980s

musicnotevideos
Warner Jepson's original songs here are videos with musical notation created with an Amiga Computer
which he then uploaded to You Tube in the 2000's.
(Audio Mp3s of the same songs can be found on the music page)

Bunzhi
Bunzhee
Judy Jolly
Native Run
Chambo
Ice Box Nice Box
Prelude and Dance (SADDLE THE UNICORN)
TIME MACHINE Prelude, the machine, flight and fall
Sing Sung Boogie
TostTest
The Knight Errant
Ya Feel It

1990s until 2011

Performance Videos


Videos of Warner Jepson's musical compostions performed by himself with accompaniment.
(Audio Mp3s of the same songs can be found on the music page)


Remembered
Kiira
When Heaven was Hot!
Not Much Doin'
What If
Painsong


Videos of Warner Jepson playing other composer's songs


Moonlight Serenade
What'll I Do
A Man and a Woman
Moon River
Raindrops and Birthday
Warners hands playing unknown standard on piano

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