Korg Minilogue

Herb Deutsch, the trumpeter-pianist-Theremin player-composer-Moog synthesizer co-creator and jazz inspired improviser turns 90 today, February 9, 2022,

Robert Moog, l., and Herb Deutsch at the Moog modular synthesizer

and a hearty Happy Birthday to him! In celebration, Moog Music has produced a video interview with this emeritus professor of Hofstra University, where he taught composition and electronic music, as the first of a series titled Giants.

He’s been less often mentioned in the story of the revolution in musical possibilities wrought by physical architecture for generating and processing electronic sound waves than his friend the synth inventor Dr. Robert Moog, or West Coast designer Don Buchla, or their predecessor Leon Theremin. During the mid ’60s burst of electronic music by such visionaries as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley and Morton Subotnick, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock and Jimi Hendrix, Deutsch was there, leading an improvising electro-acoustic ensemble at Manhattan’s Town Hall and the Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden.

Immediately as this text was posted came news of the death of composer, educator and Synclavier developer Jon Appelton at age 83; his electro-acoustic works include Human Music from 1970, a series of interactions with trumpeter Don Cherry. All due respects.

Hear Deutsch at 14:18 tell of developing the modular synth for such basics of sound-shaping as control over its attack and decay. He conceived the keyboard interface for triggering sonic events, and personally enfolded evocative social-political content into multi-dimensional narratives of sound organized in time.

That Deutsch was (and remains?) a jazz enthusiast dedicated to real-time improvisation puts the cherry on the top, as far as I’m concerned, of his reputation as a key figure in 20th century musical innovation and re-conception. His recordings collected on From Moog to Mac sort of a best-of, with “Jazz Images, a Worksong and Blues,” (1965 — credited as the first composition for a Moog) featuring bluesy piano and (overdubbed?) horn intersected interwoven with thick and thin electronic lines, unnaturally long fades, whirling sirens, white noise, delays and maybe backward tape. A Christmas Carol (1963) his prescient mix of found sounds, spoken word and haunting ambiance, was a contemporaneous response to the Alabama church bombing that killed four young girls and also drew profound comment from James Baldwin, John Coltrane and Dr. Martin Luther King. Deutsch’s composition still has power, and reminds me of Ilhan MimaroÄŸlu’s devastating Sing Me The Song of Songmy (1971), electronics, readings and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s band with Junior Cook and Kenny Barron.

“From the very beginnings of Moog music,” says Deutsch, “Bob and I understood one thing very clearly: The designer of the instrument must understand the needs of the artist, must understand the minds and the creativity and the thoughts of the artist. And the artist should then recognize the designer’s ability to produce what that artist needs. . . .This instrument has changed the way people think about what music should be.”

POSTSCRIPT Beyond jazz — I was curious as an early teenabout weird electronic music in continuum with other unconventional, experimental and hyper-expressive arts. I found the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center album, started listening and didn’t stop. I was delighted when attending Syracuse University to be able to play (study? learn?) at its Moog studio, which took up a loft in Crouse Hall. I don’t know if it’s still there. Here’s my bit on that experience, soundtrack from ’71.

If I’ve put this up before, forgive me. Is it over-wrought? I’m currently going nuts with a Korg Minilogue and Monotribe and Arturia Microfreak.

K-rAd and his Euro-rack at Sushi Dokku; photo by Marc PoKempner

K-rAd freely improvised and spontaneously composed an original, pulsing, burbling, chiming, floating and ripping, multi-layered, deep and flowing funky-bassed, percussion-lively suite over about three hours last night (7/25/18), using his elaborate, sound-unboundÂ Euro-rackÂ synthesizer setup to stir, smooth and spice social interactions in a seemingly unlikely Chicago venue for such a thing.

DownÂ an alley, through a back door (see the bright red arrow) down in a basement ofÂ Sushi DokkuÂ in Chicago’s fashionable W. Randolph Street dining district, a small crowd of not-necessarily music-seeking patrons seemingly in their late 20s sat at booths or a horseshoe bar sipping sake, picking at small plates, chatting, flirting, a couple necking. They were clearly easy, maybe pleased and perhaps somehow moved by the electronic music, which filled the room actively, vividly. This wasn’t subtle Eno-esque ambiance, more like Terry Riley’s mirrors onÂ Rainbow in Curved Air reflectingÂ shards of guitar-keyboards fromÂ In A Silent Way with James Jamerson‘s loping Motown dance lines underneath and marimba, gongs, super-fast figures, anything else of sonic possibility liable to bubble up or flash forth any moment. Often yet not always there was a perky, steady beat and streaming sequencer figures but no other recurring structure to speak of, hence no expectations, and no guidelines (words, “melody,”Â song form, defined harmonic field) for listeners to grab onto.

Attendees may not, however, have been trying to grab on or listening at all, so much as being in their own space, oblivious if still possibly influenced by their sonic surroundings. Put me in mind of the mythic days (before my time) when big, showy Hammond B-3 organs ruled at neighborhood corner taverns. As such, this solo synth show, orchestrally even more grandiose, felt like future jazz, present tense.

under Sushi Dokku, photo: Marc PoKempner

K-rAd aka Chris Grabowski is the expert soundman of the Green Mill, a jazz haven — his deft attentions have served not only an elite of U.S. musicians but also the Mill’s every-night, all year ’round audience. He understands the ebb and flow dynamic between performer and audience, but wasn’t doing anything specifically to shape his soundtrack beyond his own impulse/whim. “It nice to play here,” Grabowski said, “they seem to like it,” with a sweep of hand encompassing everyone in the joint, and he’s happy it’s a regular gig — he’s here every other months (“Someone else doing modular things on off-months, I think.”). It doesn’t advertise, though.Â K-rAd can most easily be found on Facebook, but is modest about upcoming appearances there, too.Â

He kept an eye on the room while focusing mostly with his ears on the waveforms coursing, modulating, filtered and reverberating at his fingertips’ not very dramatic patch, button-push and dial (sorry I didn’t take an inventory of Grabowski’s equipment, which he mentioned took more than two years of acquisition and construction, but it may be proprietary information, anyway). The nearly palpable physicality of electronic music, as I heard it, made the air kind of tingly. (But then, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately obsessed with a Korg Minilogue). My pals and I split a shrimp tempura, a flight of assorted sakes and can of Kikusui Aged Funaguchi. Yes, I’d go back.

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Happy 90th to electronic music pioneer Herb Deutsch

Synth and-sushi bar, Chicago (future jazz, present tense)