Bob Moog's Comments for SEAMUS 2005 Award

Robert A. Moog honors Wendy Carlos It's an honor and a privilege to pay homage to Wendy Carlos, and to celebrate her appointment of the 2005 SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award. It was my good fortune to meet Wendy some four decades ago, when she was a student of Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center. Over the years as her areas of expertise broadened and her place of honor at the forefront of synthesis and electronic music production became widely acknowledged, she always set the highest standards, - both musical and technical, - through her keen esthetic sense and meticulous attention to detail. Wendy always seemed to be the first to grasp the musical potential of new electronic music gear and, at the same time, to accept responsibility for developing the discipline necessary to use the new instruments to produce music of the highest quality. The unprecedented popularity of Switched-on Bach, which Wendy released at a time of great ferment in our popular musical culture, was at once strikingly innovative and of breathtakingly high musical quality. I remember the occasion on which Switched-on Bach was first played in public. It was at a technical session of the Audio Engineering Society in the fall of 1968, just a few weeks before the record went on sale. The entire roomful of audio engineering professionals gave Wendy an emotional and enthusiastic standing ovation. And a short time after that, Switched-on Bach was on its way to becoming one of the best-selling classical albums of all time. With each succeeding release, Wendy continued to scale new heights of technical sophistication, creativity, and musical excellence. As tape has given way to hard disk recording and digital synthesis has arrived on the music technology scene, Wendy has continued to develop techniques, set standards, and produce recorded music that is a joy and an inspiration to countless thousands of listeners around the world. - Bob Moog -- April 2005

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