Odyssey Synthposium Participants

Lisa Bella Donna is an internationally acclaimed recording artist, composer, modular synthesist, sound designer, educator, and clinician. She has decades of experience as a multi-instrumentalist session musician, educator, as well as developing extensive techniques with musique concreté, modular synthesis, analog recording & mixing techniques, microtonal music, orchestration & film composition.

Greg Phillinganes is one of the world’s most sought after Keyboard artists. A Detroit native and music veteran for over 40 years, he began his career in 1975 with Stevie Wonder as part of his band, Wonderlove. Since leaving Stevie in 1979, Phillinganes went on to record, perform, tour and or write with a staggering array of GRAMMY Award winning artists. A short list includes Quincy Jones, Eric Clapton, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick, Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart, Neil Diamond, Andrea Bocelli, Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger, Babyface, David Gilmour, John Mayer, Garth Brooks, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Steven Tyler, Jennifer Hudson, Lionel Richie, Bruno Mars, Santana and Paul McCartney.

David Friend and Alan R. Pearlman co-founded ARP Instruments. ARP Instruments developed synthesizers used by Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and even helped Steven Spielberg communicate with aliens providing that legendary five-note communication in Close Encounters of the ThirdKind.

Music journalist, author, teacher, and performer Mark Vail is the author of The Synthesizer: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding, Programming, Playing, and Recording the Ultimate Electronic Music Instrument (2014), published by Oxford University Press and reviewed in Tape Op and Sound On Sound magazines, as well as Vintage Synthesizers (1993, 2000) and The Hammond Organ: Beauty in the B (1997, 2002), both from Backbeat Books.

William Lee Currie is a British multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter – best known as the keyboard and strings player with new wave band Ultravox, who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1980s.

Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon – The prolific Texan musicians Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein are responsible for a body of work that’s synonymous with the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, the supernatural everytown at the center of the Netflix hit Stranger Things. But as the small town becomes the unlikely site for a supernatural battle within the hit series, Dixon and Stein’s soundscapes, too, have expanded in lockstep. In the meantime, Stein and Dixon compose music for feature films, documentary series and large-scale installations and play in the band S U R V I V E.

DJ CherishTheLuv, aka Cynthia Cherish Malaran, is a Bose Professional DJ, Sound Designer, Multimedia Artist, Synthesist, Multi-Instrumentalist, Educator, Producer and Composer for TV & Film. Her creations can be seen/heard on NBC, MTV, Fashion Week programming, and on over 50+ shows on Netflix. Take a listen to DJ CherishTheLuv’s ARP Odyssey Playlist 

Danz CM is a producer, composer, song-writer, graphic designer, and the founder of Channel 9 Records and Synth History. Since 2010 she has been making music, formerly under the moniker of Computer Magic and currently under Danz CM.

Drew Schlesinger has been playing synthesizers and composing electronic music since the early 1970s. In 1986, he began developing third-party sounds for Casio CZ synths, leading to a career designing presets for over 200 products from 30 companies including Roland, Korg, Kurzweil, Alesis, E-mu, Ensoniq, TC, Lexicon, Eventide, and others. After a 20-year hiatus in the corporate world, he has recently returned to music and sound design. His latest work is the album “Summer Synthesis 1978” (available on Bandcamp), a collaboration with guitarist David Torn created over 40 years ago.

Alex Ball is a composer, producer and supervisor and has worked on several hundred broadcast campaigns. An 11-year stint as Music Producer for M&C Saatchi involved working on campaigns for brands such NatWest, Jameson, Douwe Egberts, Coca-Cola, Havana Club Rum, Peroni, FCA, Public Health England, Ballantine’s, Virgin Holidays, Transport for London, Amazon Prime, Currys PC World, HP, Ribena, Gulf Air, Ladbrokes, Hyundai and many, many more.
​Outside of advertising, he’s worked on the trailers for “Sackboy: A Big Adventure” and “Watch Dogs: Legion”, composed music for the Cbeebies BAFTA nominated series “Tee & Mo” and had his music used in an episode of Netflix Stranger Things and BBC’s “The Apprentice”.
​Along the way he’s picked awards and nominations from British Arrows Craft Awards, One Show Awards, Music & Sound Awards, Vox Awards and Creative Circle.

Tom Piggott has been a product specialist and clinician for numerous companies, including ARP, CRUMAR, SYNERGY and more, and worked with Peter Nero, Stevie Wonder, Nyle Steiner, Linda McCartney, Vangellis, John Entwhistle, Klaus Schulze,T Lavitz, Wendy Carlos, Dr. Richard Boulanger, Mike Bergeman, Donald Fagan, Edgar Winter, Tom  Coster, Jimmy Page, Roger Powell, Jerry Kovarski, and many others.

Alsún Ní Chasaide, aka Alison Cassidy, is an engineer for Apple and has been restoring and modifying vintage electronic musical instruments for over 30 years. In the late 1980s. Alison started small, designing speech synthesisers on Eurocard, before that was a thing. This grew organically into designing analog synths on Veroboard, then into synth repairs. She would buy trashed machines for fun, then restore them back to life, starting with an Elka Synthex in around ’92, and growing from there.

Bill T. Miller is a musician/ engineer /producer /remixer /photographer /filmmaker /web designer mutant kook from Boston, MA, USA. He has several different band personas recorded in his studio (Headroom) and released on his label (ExtraTerrestrial Discs.) Tons of CDs, Records, Tapes, and MP3s are available from: Out of Band Experience (OBE) – Kings Of Feedback – Drum Army – King Of Slack – Orgy Of Noise – Zonkulator.

Jennifer Hruska and her group are members of a New England jazz ensemble called the District 5 Jazz Collective. They’ve come together for the Synthposium to play three classic jazz fusion songs from the 1970’s that featured ARP synthesizers, in particular, the ARP Odyssey. Jennifer teaches electronic music production here at Berklee and is also on the board of the ARP Foundation.

Michael Brigida worked at ARP from 1972 to 1980. His first position at ARP was Eastern Regional Sales Manager with a territory from Miami Florida to Bangor Maine. He then was employed as International Product Specialist where he gave numerous synthesizer teaching seminars, clinics, demonstrations and concerts at trade shows, music dealers and international distributors. Michael also helped in the voicing and design of the ARP Omni, ARP Piano with Phillip Dodds and the ARP Quadra with David Friend.

Ian R. Staer is a Philadelphia-based electronic musician. Under the pseudonym ST∆ER, his work juxtaposes analogue synthesizer textures with spare acoustic piano melodies, conjuring vast aural landscapes from a concise tonal vocabulary: “…a rich, fully formed musical environment we will want to visit over and again.” — Chuck Van Zyl, Stars End Radio