Search Results

(b Utica, NY, Oct 20, 1944; d New York, Nov 14, 2016). American disc jockey, producer, and party planner. He spent his youth listening to records with a racially mixed crowd and then relocated to New York in the early 1960s. Moving to a loft (known later as “The Loft”), Mancuso became involved designing sound systems for clubs around the city, including Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage. He began to host invitation-only parties in the mid-1960s for which he spun a wide range of musical styles; many of the guests, including Tony Humphries and Frankie Hawkins, would become DJs themselves. Later parties took on titles and became special events, including “Love Saves the Day,” which took place in 1970. In 1974 Mancuso and Steven D’Aquisto developed a shared record pool for local DJs. His parties continued at The Loft until 1985, when he began to search out new locations offering more space. After ...

(b Bermuda, July 10, 1957). American audio engineer, musician, and owner of Keith McMillen Instruments, based in Berkeley, California. He received his BS in acoustics from the University of Illinois, where he also studied classical guitar and composition. In 1979 he founded Zeta Music, which designed and sold electric and electronic violins and basses. In 1992 he organized a research laboratory for Gibson Guitars. He developed a computerized composition, notation, and performance system, and also helped devise ZIPI, a MIDI-like music control language. At the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley, he researched audio networking, synthesizers, and string instruments. In 1996 he became director of engineering for the audio processing and distributed music networks division of Harmon Kardon. In 1999 he founded Octiv, Inc., an Internet audio signal processing company, which produced the ‘Volume Logic’ plug-in for iTunes that allows digital audio remastering to improve the sound produced by computers and MP3 players....

(b Augsburg, June 7, 1926; d Vienna, June 2, 2015). Austrian scene designer of German birth. He was guided to study scene design by Clemens Krauss, through whom he gained early experience in scene painting at the Staatsoper in Munich, where he studied with Sievert, Preetorius and Rudolf Hartmann. From 1947 to 1954 he designed for theatres and films in Berlin, Munich and Salzburg. In 1952 he began his 20-year association with the Salzburg marionette theatre, eventually revolutionizing the design of the puppet stage and creating several new productions of Mozart operas. In 1954 he was named chief of design at the Bremen Staatstheater, where he designed his first Ring. After collaborating with Karajan on Pelléas et Mélisande at the Vienna Staatsoper in 1960 he became Karajan’s personal adviser on production, moving in 1962 to Vienna where he was appointed chief designer for the Staatsoper, the Burgtheater and the Volksoper. He made his Covent Garden début in ...

(Alfred )

(b Hull, August 14, 1922; d March 7, 2002). English physicist, writer and lecturer on the physics of music. He studied physics at Queen Mary College, London (BSc 1942), and at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (PhD 1951, DSc 1959), where he was a lecturer then a reader in physics (1948–85). As professor and head of department of physics at University College, Cardiff (1965–83), he established the first electronic music studio in a British university (1970); he was visiting professor of experimental physics at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1976–88), and became emeritus professor of physics at the University of Wales in 1983. He was elected an honorary fellow of the Institute of Acoustics (1985).

Though his major research activity was in the study of X-ray and optical diffraction, the important musical acoustics research group which he founded at Cardiff carried out pioneering holographic studies of the vibrational modes of stringed instrument bodies. In ...