Tony Imperatrice has enjoyed a lifelong fascination with music and sound. As a kid he was introduced to classical music with season tickets to the symphony and the opera starting when he was just 5 years old. Piano lessons and later violin training led him to perform many recitals and to participation in the junior symphony and orchestra camp. As a teenager Tony discovered the pipe organ and the synthesizer and started exploring music and sound beyond the classical world.

“I became interested in experimental music and the efforts of popular musicians. As soon as high-quality tape recorders where available musicians started using them to augment their performances. Les Paul and Mary Ford used 2 tape decks to bounce back and forth creating layers that turned Les into an entire band and Mary into a 4-part singing group. This innovation led to the development of multi-track recording. Robert Fripp used multiple decks with a single reel of tape to create the first delay and loop effects. This led to the development of the tape loop echo. Today all of this and much more exists in the digital world. Through the use of multi–track looping and multi-layered echo and reverb effects I have taken the ancient sounds of the pipe organ and augmented them to create rhythmic and immersive sounds that would not otherwise be possible. This music is hard to categorize, so I have settled on the genres that have influenced it. I love the overlapping emersion of ambient music, I am deeply influenced by the drama of post rock instrumental and the rhythmic power of electronica. My first experiments with this music happened just before the pandemic lockdown”.

Tony worked as a church music director and played in many rock bands. He has written liturgical and secular music in a wide variety of genres and continues to explore new sounds and possibilities. Tony is a respected pipe organ expert and has worked and consulted on many organ installations and designs. Tony is a lifelong resident of Fresno where he has lived with his wife, artist Aileen Imperatrice for more than 30 years.