Keith Emerson

Tonight, August 29 at 6 PM, the new Museum of Making Music exhibition Waves of Inspiration: The Legacy of Moog will be getting its grand opening:

Visitors can enjoy the music of The Volt Per Octaves during a wine & cheese reception. Following the reception, the museum presents a demonstration with Keith Emerson and music by Erik Norlander. Emerson, the personification of the Moog legacy and maverick of the Moog synthesizer, will demonstrate his “Monster Moog” modular system. Norlander is a prolific artist who pushes the Moog tradition into the future with an evocative synthesizer technique. His perpetual live use of vintage instruments—Moog synthesizers in particular—give his performances a depth of sound seldom seen. Don’t miss this memorable evening!

The exhibit runs through April 30th. Details at the Museum of Making Music site.

If you make it to the exhibit, leave a comment with your thoughts, links to photos, videos, etc!

Image: kscherer11

Saturday Synth Porn: Great shot of Keith Emerson rocking out, with his monster modular synth as a backdrop.

via the Synthtopia Flickr Group

The Museum of Making Music and The Bob Moog Foundation have announced Waves of Inspiration: The Legacy of Moog, a special exhibition set to run from August 29, 2009 – April 30, 2010 at the Museum’s facilities in Carlsbad, California. The exhibit is the first of its kind, marking the first public display of the artifacts from Bob Moog’s archives.

The exhibition, which highlights the inventor’s career and the impact that it had on the world of music, will feature rare vintage synthesizers and other related Moog instruments and memorabilia from the Bob Moog Archives and from various private collections.

A custom video presentation created by Moog historian and exhibit consultant Brian Kehew will form a central part of the exhibit. The exhibit will explore the numerous musicians, engineers and colleagues who played a vital role in the evolution of the Moog sound and the relationship between and the inventor/toolmaker and the musician, as well as the genesis of a variety of musical interfaces.

The instruments featured in the exhibit will trace the history of Moog’s work. The exhibit begins with vintage theremins and a prototype of the first modular synthesizer, which originally belonged to Herb Deutsch, an experimental music composer from Long Island whose 1963 meeting with Dr. Bob Moog would help define the synthesizer as a musical instrument, and set a course for the future of electronic music. Other excellent examples of modular instruments from the late 1960s and early 1970s will be on exhibit, most notably Keith Emerson’s famous “Monster Moog” will be featured for the first time as a part of the museum display. Read more…

Every Sunday, we bring you a sweet Sunday Synth Jam or two.  This week we’ve got a classic synth jam from Keith Emerson.

OK – this is as much of an organ jam as a synth jam, but when you hear Emerson, Lake and Palmer wail on Knife Edge, there will be no quibbles about that sort of thing.

Keith Emerson jams on organ, wails on the synth, engages in onanistic pantomime with a ribbon controller, makes strange electronic mating noises with a spring reverb and then finishes the thing off by playing the organ again, backwards.

Whew! Read more…

Moog Music has announced that MoogFest – the annual event honoring the remarkable vision of Robert Moog and his amazing musical inventions  – is moving from New York City to Asheville, NC.

Above, Bob Moog introduces Keith Emerson at MoogFest 2004, and Emerson proceeds to bust out the Moog modular prog chops.

MoogFest 2009 will be held in Asheville the weekend of September 11 – 13, 2009.

MoogFest will celebrate Bob Moog’s legacy as a sonic pioneer, which will be the thread that unites the festival’s rich array of musical offerings. Moogfest 2009 will also incorporate elements of the EtherMusic Festival – showcasing the theremin, the world’s first electronic music instrument. The electronic music festival will host artists and audiences from throughout the world in different venues throughout Asheville’s historic downtown.

Moog made Asheville his home for the last 30 years of his life.