Don Slepian

Don Slepian combines skills in music and electronics in a career of performing electronic classical music. An exciting performer in a conservative style, he embodies the present-day trend of combining high technology with high art. Born into a scientific family, Slepian showed both musical and technical talent early in life. By 1969 he was already programming computers, building electronic music circuitry, and sampling, looping and crossfading sounds with classic electronic music studio tape techniques. In 1971 he worked as a wiring technician in the computer sound output room in the Acoustics and Behavioral Research Department of Bell Telephone Laboratorles in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In the fall of that year, Slepian moved to Hawaii and entered an experimental program at the University of Hawaii that allowed him to major in electronic music. He first learned and then taught classes in all the early analog synthesizers and worked in commercial soundtracks before becoming a full-time theater musician. In 1979 he began his video art work, starting with the Chromaton 14 Analog Video Synthesizer. By the end of '79 Slepian returned to Bell Labs, where he spent two years working with their most advanced digital synthesizer. From that time until the present he has produced his current discography of 8 CDs and began his collaboration with Stuart Diamond, forming the currently active Electric Diamond ensemble. He currently hosts ArtMusicCoffeehouse, a weekly musical webcast show heard throughout America and Asia. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.