Lisa Bella Donna Live Performance In The Moog Sound Lab, ‘Ascension’

Moog Music shared this video, featuring synthesist Lisa Bella Donna performing Ascension live in the Moog Sound Lab.

The performance features the classic lllP Moog modular system, Moog One, Subsequent 37, Subsequent 25, and the Moog semi-modular family (Matriarch, Grandmother, Mother-32, DFAM, and Subharmonicon).

Here’s what Bella Donna has to say about the performance:

“As a longtime electronic music composer and sound designer, I have always regarded my synthesizer studio as a personal “sacred space.” A special place where I can be free and open to create whatever music that needs to vessel through in the moment. To explore the wild, wonderful wilderness of sound and synthesis. A place to find inspiration and to evoke artistic ascension. To create and to be playful in the process.

I wanted to project a piece that expressed my happiness and gratitude to get to be creative with my friends and colleagues at Moog. It’s always so much fun to bounce ideas and create a special atmosphere together, each time we have the opportunity to create these pieces.

It’s been a year of challenge and tribulation for all of us in the world. I am so grateful to see the other side of this chapter unfold into promises of new horizons of making art out in the open again. I hope the spirit of this piece inspires a desire for you to turn on and turn up your art with sound and music.”

Ascension comes from the album of the same name, which is now available via Bandcamp. You can preview it below:

21 thoughts on “Lisa Bella Donna Live Performance In The Moog Sound Lab, ‘Ascension’

    1. We regularly feature live electronic music performances that are a) musically interesting; and/or b) make interesting use of gear; and/or c) make use of gear that will be interest to readers.

      Lisa Bella Donna’s performances consistently check several of those boxes, since they are live performances by a talented musician and feature an interesting mix of gear.

      If you’d like to see more of something different, step up and suggest some performance videos that you think will be relevant to readers, instead just contributing complaints and attacks. There’s a Feedback link at the top of every single page of this site.

        1. No, it’s all still here.

          I love Bella videos. The only video I will watch – no splash screen with intros, no commercials, no waving hands, not talking, just good music.

          I would love to spend the week in the Moog sound lab.

    2. Synthtopia generously posts synth videos of all kinds of musicians on all levels, including nobodies like me)

  1. Well done! She plays really well and the composition is soo nice. Compliment! This is definitely not this superboring berlin school stuff…. more please!

  2. Wonderful Art Lisa!! This violent planet needs wondrous healing Art!!

    If Klaus Shultz did many concerts while shitting on carpets on the stage…..why can’t Lisa?

  3. Lisa, you are becoming one of my favorite electronic musicians. I love the sounds and musical soundscapes you create the more and more I listen to your work. You are indeed very talented. Keep it up my fair lady!

  4. Moog is really skilled marketer. Lisa is also very skilled musician. In a way, visibility like this marks a return to the 70s, when synthesizer manufacturers picked up well-known musicians in their stables.

    1. Totally agree.

      Other companies seem like they want to tell you how awesome their gear is. Moog just makes videos with talented musicians doing their thing and they don’t have to tell you anything, you can see and hear it.

  5. I synthesize music with my synths. And I synthesize love with my music. From that formula I have come to a conclusion that synths = love, and that is a fact.

  6. So after some build up it gets finally gets more upbeat …. and then suddenly it is all taken back at around 7:40 whats that? – It could have ascended a little more – 🙂 – is there a longer version of this? – nice ending on the motive of the intro.

  7. Ms. Lisa brings out what I call the sweet side of Moogs, where they’re at their most lush or fundamentally Moog-pure. I’ve owned a few, so I can readily hear her ability to coax different models into that zone. Its impressive.

    I’d like to hear what she’d do with a multi-manufacturer rig, but this direction is what’s calling her the most. That blade can cut! You don’t ask Yo-Yo Ma to take up the ukelele. Its good to see Moog get a new hero. Its like Patrice Rushen becoming a Yamaha artist a while back and showing off their gear to the Nth degree.

    1. This was for Moog, but there are several videos on Youtube of her working with her personal gear, which has lots of Moogs, but also some ARP gear, vintage string synths, reel-to-reel recorders, Mellotron – basically my dream studio!

  8. Cant say I’ve ever enjoyed anything from this artist. Surprised at how much visibility she gets considering the music. Then again kanye west is a thing so who knows.

  9. The best piece I’ve heard from her so far. I think previously she was more reserved in terms of stage presence, and always inspiring to see people opening up and just being themselves)

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