E. Doctor Smith's Blog

I last saw the famed Dr. Robert Moog, at the 117th AES Convention in October, posing with my friends from the Women's Audio Mission. Known for the synthesizer that bears his name, the electronic keyboard genius died at his home in Asheville, North Carolina on Sunday. He was 71. Moog was the inventor of the Moog synthesizer - whose variants have been used by everyone from Pink Floyd to Kraftwerk, Duran Duran, the Black Eyed Peas and the Neptunes - was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer in April and had received radiation therapy and chemotherapy to combat the disease, according to a post on his official Web site. Born on May 23, 1934 in New York, Moog began tinkering with early versions of electronic instruments as a teenager. After writing an article about them in 1954, he opened a business building and selling theremins, machines in which pitch and volume could be controlled by the wave of a musicians' hand. Moog earned degrees in physics, electrical engineeri...

Having had the pleasure of seeing all three of these stellar musicians in many of their previous incarnations, I am genuinely looking forward to this late-summer tour. I have already gotten rave reviews of their east coast shows in Washington and Vermont. Trio! brings together the musical talents of the prodigious Stanley Clarke on bass, banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck, and the incredible French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty in a stunning genre-crossing collaboration. All three musicians are world renowned, critically acclaimed and award-winning performers and collaborators and this joint venture is an exciting exploration of their collective musical backgrounds. Stanley Clarke has many titles: bassist, composer, conductor, orchestrator, arranger, songwriter, producer, and recording artist. In a career that has spanned more than thirty years, he has explored new territory and redefined the role of the bass as more than just a rhythm instrument. He invented the piccolo and tenor bass...