Cory Cullinan new avant-garde and experimental musical journey “Footprint”

Footprint was originally conceived by Cory Cullinan as an undergrad at Stanford University in the late 1980s taking famed composer and electronic music legend John Chowning’s 220A course. He started working on it only to find it was too time-consuming for his undergraduate course load — at the time, digital audio workstations didn’t exist, and creating all the field recordings and somehow putting them together in a multitrack mix would’ve taken months or years of work. So he never finished it. But he always wanted to. Fast forward to the mid-2020s. Cory received word that Dr. Chowning, his Stanford Music Major Advisor and the creator of FM synthesis that powers the DXY keyboard and more on almost every 80s and 90s pop recording, was coming — at age 89 — to a concert Cory was playing with Riley Max in San Jose, CA. Cory immediately thought: ‘I have to finish the piece I never finished in Chowning’s class.’ Assisted by Cory’s own former college Recording Arts student Elizabeth Anaya — who’s now Cory’s Business & Studio Manager — Cory and Elizabeth worked at his Reach Studios to finish the piece before the show. It sounds remarkably similar to what he heard in his head in 1989. Footprint now exists in three formats: as an audio piece, as a live audience interaction piece, and as a multimedia piece that’s a collaboration with Cory’s daughter Sidney Cullinan. As an audio piece, it was premiered to Cory’s Recording Arts students at Stanford in the summer of 2024. When surveyed as to what the piece was about and its message, the students fell into three distinct groups with different but strongly specific answers. This is exactly what the composer had hoped — an immersive emotional experience, yet one open to intellectual interpretation based on your own experience. Playing on this interactive and contemplative nature, the piece was premiered live in San Jose, CA in the summer of 2024, with Dr. Chowning in attendance. Cory dedicated it to him and said he’d always wanted to finish it in Chowning’s class. At the end of the piece, his former professor shouted humorously from the crowd: “Cory, you did it!” Among other things, the interactive version of the piece allows audiences to experience the observation that they shape their own environment. Cory’s daughter Sidney Cullinan was given free rein to write, edit and create a film to accompany the audio she was given for the multimedia version of Footprint. Sidney has directed music videos featuring Grammy winners and more, produced environmental documentaries as both composer and editor, designed social media for the US Green Chamber Of Commerce, created campaigns and social media content securing the greatest engagement in the history of the world’s largest environmental non-profit (The Nature Conservancy), and is double-majoring and writing her Honors Thesis in Environmental Studies and Communications at UC Santa Barbara, the birthplace of the American environmental movement. Composer Cory Cullinan is hosting and introducing his mentor John Chowning for a series of lectures/performances of the legendary composer’s work at colleges in Colorado in February 2025.

Cory Cullinan (Doctor Noize) is a chart-topping musician, commissioned composer for stage and screen, author, award-winning teacher, speaker, studio owner and humorist. He ignites imaginations with vibrant songs, engaging workshops, and interactive performances, sparking joy for anyone who likes to have fun. Featuring strong and diverse characters with contrasting and collaborating perspectives, his work is for everyone. He inspires creativity, curiosity and character through music, art, and words. 

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