Ned Lagin | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1948-03-17)March 17, 1948 (age 77) |
| Origin | Roslyn Heights, New York, United States |
| Genres | Electronic,avant-garde,space music,jazz,classical |
| Occupation(s) | Artist, Photographer, Scientist, Composer,Keyboardist |
| Instrument(s) | Keyboards, piano, clavichord, synthesizers,electric piano |
| Labels | Round, United Artists, Rykodisc |
| Website | Spiritcats.com |
Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist.[1][2][3]
Lagin is considered a pioneer in the development and use of minicomputers and personal computers in real-time stage and studio music composition and performance.[4][5]
He is known for his electronic music compositionSeastones, for performing with theGrateful Dead, and for his photography and art.[1][2]
Ned Lagin was born inNew York City and raised onLong Island inRoslyn Heights, New York. Growing up, Lagin was influenced by classical and jazz music, and the modern music and art cultures of New York City in the 1960s. He started photography with aKodak Baby Brownie Special at the age of five, and piano lessons and science, natural history, and electronic projects at the age of six.[3]
He attended theWheatley School inOld Westbury, New York, was awarded twoNational Science Foundation Scholarships, and attended theMassachusetts Institute of Technology with the intention of becoming an astronaut. Lagin received a degree in molecular biology and humanities from MIT in 1971, where he studied withJohn Harbison, Gregory Tucker, David Epstein,Noam Chomsky,Gian-Carlo Rota,Salvador Luria, andJerome Lettvin. Chomsky's generative grammar concepts inspired Lagin's thinking about creating generative music forms (1968), and Lettvin connected him to the writings ofNorbert Wiener andWarren McCulloch, and more generally tocybernetics.[2][3]
While at MIT, Lagin also completed jazz coursework at theBerklee School of Music. He was deeply influenced by the jazz world in New York City, particularly pianistBill Evans,[6] whom he met in Boston and saw perform many times in New York and Boston in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After becoming acquainted with each other, Evans wrote out some of his tunes for Lagin. During this period, his piano teachers included Dean Earl (a formerCharlie Parker sideman) andRay Santisi (a sideman with Parker,Stan Getz andDexter Gordon). He also studied jazz improvisation with saxophonistLee Konitz.[3] Throughout his studies, Lagin played piano in the MIT Concert Jazz Band and the MIT Jazz Quintet;[7] both groups were led byHerb Pomeroy, a former sideman withDuke Ellington andStan Getz.
In the autumn of 1971, Lagin began graduate study in composition as an Irving Fine Fellow atBrandeis University, where he studied withJosh Rifkin andSeymour Shifrin. He completed a symphony, a string quartet, jazz big band pieces, and electronic pieces before dropping out and permanently relocating toMarin County in the Bay Area.[8][9]
In early 1970, Lagin initiated a correspondence withJerry Garcia after seeing theGrateful Dead at theBoston Tea Party in 1969. In May 1970, he helped facilitate a concert and free live outdoor performance featuring the band at MIT that coincided with the Kent State shootings. That summer, Lagin, at Garcia's invitation, visited San Francisco and contributed piano to "Candyman" during theAmerican Beauty album sessions, played in several jams, and started what would become close friendships with Garcia, bassistPhil Lesh, andDavid Crosby.[2]
From 1970 to 1975, Lagin contributedHammond B3 organ,electric piano, andclavichord to material of his choice (primarily—but not exclusively—songs with long instrumental passages) at several Grateful Dead concerts.[3][10] His first performances with the Grateful Dead were on November 5 and November 8, 1970 at theCapitol Theater inPort Chester, New York; his first complete concert was atBoston University's Sargent Gym on November 21, 1970.[11][12][13]
During many 1974 Grateful Dead concerts over several tours, including Europe, he performed a middle set of electronic music, including parts of his compositionSeastones, on computer-controlled analog synthesizers with Phil Lesh on electronically processed bass. Some sets included Jerry Garcia playing guitar filtered through effects processors and Bill Kreutzmann on drums; these sets occasionally segued into the final Grateful Dead set, with Lagin performing with the Dead, including an appearance inThe Grateful Dead Movie.[12]
During the 1974 tours, he played through thequadraphonic vocal system of theWall of Sound PA, with 9600 watts routed through more than two hundred speakers.[3]
The March 17, 1975 cancelled Grateful Dead studio session became aSeastones session with Crosby and included "Ned's Birthday Jam."[14][15]
Lagin and Lesh's 1974 interstitial performances are included in these live Grateful Dead albums:
In 1975 Lagin releasedSeastones, aquadraphonic album ofelectronic music (composed between 1970–1974 and constituting a small part of the completeSeastones composition) onRound Records[16] and thenUnited Artists Records.[12]
A new, two CD album ofSeastones was released on March 8, 2018. This album, not a re-issue, presents most but not all of the composition as originally composed but never released or heard before. For this release,Seastones was re-mixed and re-mastered in stereo. It includes most of the original 1970–1974 studio forms, those parts of Lagin's concurrent but unfinished compositionL that are shared withSeastones, as well as some of the moment forms generated and incorporated into the composition from live performances that took place from 1973 to 1975. This two CD album contains 83 tracks (54 tracks on CD One and 29 tracks on CD Two) and altogether is 111 minutes long.
During his professional career in science and engineering R&D (1976–2011) he worked on the earliest home computing technology with anAltair 8800; was a pre-releaseApple Macintosh software seed developer;[17] developed real time digital video and image processing systems;[18] biotechnology and immunology instrumentation; DNA, RNA, and peptide synthesis and sequencing hardware and artificial intelligence software; early wireless network routing systems;[19][20] and consulted in ecological planning, design and habitat restoration, including aerial and ecological photography for environmental studies.[2][3]
Lagin began photography at the age of five, first with a Baby Brownie camera, and subsequently with other small format cameras. From childhood and continuing through to the beginning of college, photography was for him part of being an amateur naturalist and scientist. Beginning in 1978, and continuing for the next 40 years, Lagin's primary media for creativity has been photography and art. First in small, medium (6x6cm, 6x7cm), and large (4x5) format film photography (using 1928 and 1950's Speed Graphic cameras), and subsequently using film scanners and Photoshop (1992), and digital cameras (2003). His photography and art influences includeAnsel Adams,Elliot Porter,Walker Evans,Edward Weston,Life magazine andThe World We Live In, andNational Geographic.[3]
Lagin's images, as single photographs and paintings, and in compositions of multiple images, include nature, landscapes, sand drawings, nudes, erotica, and self-portraits. His creation of sand drawings and multi-image forms to create "fields of meaning(s)" was influenced by the rock art and imagery (petroglyphs, pictographs) of Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, and prehistoric Europeans. Lagin's photographic, sand drawing, and painting collections and artist's books, spanning 1981–2017, include:Our Love,Metaphysics,Light in the Silence,Artifacts of Desire,Reflections of Solitude, andLight Time Geographies. Additionally, Lagin has written a collection of writings titledNotes about art, metaphysics, natural history, photography, pictures and "the natural history of picture world". From hisNotes:
"when you look at a picture
the picture looks at you"
Completed in 2016,Cat Dreams[21] is Ned Lagin's first music CD, and first public music, since 1975.Cat Dreams is formally a suite of composed pieces, and composed melodic, tonal, and rhythmic frameworks for improvisation. These are presented as solo, duo, small group, and band; acoustic, electric, electronic music. Originally composed and planned for a two CD release,Cat Dreams is the first of the two CDs that comprise the full suite of compositions.
OnCat Dreams, Lagin plays electric piano, keyboard synths (including vocals, cello, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, and others), Native American flutes, and softsynths: Ableton Live and Max for Live, Reason, Reaktor
The other musicians performing onCat Dreams:
Lagin has served inNovato, California[22] andMarin County government: Planning Commission, Downtown Plan Committee Chairperson,[23] Economic Development Commission, Tree Task Force, Marin Conservation League Board of Directors,[24] Marin County Flood Control Advisory Board, and chairperson for the Warner Creek Committee.[3][25]
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