Gershon Kingsley
Encyclopedia
Gershon Kingsley a contemporary German American
composer, is well known as a pioneer of electronic music
and the Moog synthesizer
and founder of the First Moog Quartet
, as a partner in the famous electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley
, and for his rock-inspired compositions for Jewish religious ceremonies. Kingsley conducted and arranged many Broadway musicals, and composes for film and for television shows and commercials. His work garnered recognition with a Tony Award
nomination for Best Conductor and Musical Director, two Clio Awards
for his work in advertising, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bob Moog Foundation
. Kingsley also composes classical chamber works and his most recent opera, Raoul, was premiered in Bremen in 2008. His compositions are eclectic and vary between avant-garde
and pop
styles. Kingsley is most famous for his influential electronic instrumental composition "Popcorn
".
, Germany into a Jewish family which fled to Palestine
in 1938, while Hitler was in power in Germany. After his family settled in Palestine he became a self-taught pianist and performed with local jazz bands around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
, which he recorded with Jean-Jacques Perrey
. The Perrey-Kingsley duo went on to record Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the Moog
and subsequently went their separate ways. Kingsley then recorded Music To Moog By, a classic Moog album consisting mainly of cover songs, originally by The Beatles
, Beethoven
, and Simon and Garfunkel
. His next effort, titled First Moog Quartet, is a compilation of live recordings from his nationwide tour featuring no fewer than four Moog synthesizers. Some of these compositions are more experimental, featuring spoken word
and beat poetry backed by synthetic noises and tones. Kingsley moved beyond the Moog, and later pioneered the use of the earliest Fairlight
and Synclavier
digital synthesizers.
". Kingsley released the track 87 days later on the album Music To Moog By, and it soon became the first international electronic dance hit.
Many artists have covered "Popcorn", including Hot Butter
, Jean Michel Jarre
, Aphex Twin
, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Marsheaux
, Muse
, and The Muppets
. The song has not been covered by Kraftwerk
though mislabeled copies of the song are in circulation. A version by hardcore artist Rezidents is mislabeled as by avant-garde group The Residents
.
", used by The Walt Disney Company
for the Main Street Electrical Parade
at its theme parks; and "The Savers", best known as the theme for the game show The Joker's Wild
. He also wrote the logo sting for WGBH-TV
in Boston that appears throughout the United States on PBS programming produced by the station.
German American
German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry and comprise about 51 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population, the country's largest self-reported ancestral group...
composer, is well known as a pioneer of electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and the Moog synthesizer
Moog synthesizer
Moog synthesizer may refer to any number of analog synthesizers designed by Dr. Robert Moog or manufactured by Moog Music, and is commonly used as a generic term for older-generation analog music synthesizers. The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled...
and founder of the First Moog Quartet
First Moog Quartet
The First Moog Quartet was formed by Gershon Kingsley in 1970, as the result of a request by famous impresario Sol Hurok to hear the Moog synthesizer's capabilities demonstrated live. Other group members included Stan Free, Eric B. Knight, and Ken Bichel....
, as a partner in the famous electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley
Perrey and Kingsley
The musical duo Perrey and Kingsley are pioneers in the field of electronic music. Before their collaboration, starting in 1965, electronic music was considered to be purely avant-garde...
, and for his rock-inspired compositions for Jewish religious ceremonies. Kingsley conducted and arranged many Broadway musicals, and composes for film and for television shows and commercials. His work garnered recognition with a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
nomination for Best Conductor and Musical Director, two Clio Awards
Clio Awards
The Clio Awards are annual awards bestowed to reward innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design and communication. The categories include work in nearly all types of media, and the judges are advertising professionals from around the world....
for his work in advertising, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bob Moog Foundation
Bob Moog Foundation
The Bob Moog Memorial Foundation was created after the death of Dr. Robert Moog in 2005, and officially launched in August, 2006. His family established the foundation to honor the legacy of Moog "through its mission of igniting creativity at the intersection of music, history, science, and...
. Kingsley also composes classical chamber works and his most recent opera, Raoul, was premiered in Bremen in 2008. His compositions are eclectic and vary between avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
styles. Kingsley is most famous for his influential electronic instrumental composition "Popcorn
Popcorn (instrumental)
"Popcorn" is an early electronic pop instrumental, originally composed by Gershon Kingsley in 1969 on his album Music to Moog By. The same year this tune was released and recorded at Audio Fidelity Records label in New York City....
".
Early life
Kingsley was born Götz Gustav Ksinski in 1922 in BochumBochum
Bochum is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. It is located in the Ruhr area and is surrounded by the cities of Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Herne, Castrop-Rauxel, Dortmund, Witten and Hattingen.-History:...
, Germany into a Jewish family which fled to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in 1938, while Hitler was in power in Germany. After his family settled in Palestine he became a self-taught pianist and performed with local jazz bands around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Musical career
His career as a pop musician took off with the release of The In Sound from Way Out!The In Sound From Way Out! (Perrey and Kingsley album)
The In Sound from Way Out! was the first collaboration between electronic musicians Perrey and Kingsley and considered to be the first-ever mainstream electronic music album. It was released in 1966 on Vanguard Records, an independent label in Santa Monica, California.Perrey and Kingsley came...
, which he recorded with Jean-Jacques Perrey
Jean-Jacques Perrey
Jean-Jacques Perrey is a French electronic music producer and was an early pioneer in the genre. He is best known within the sphere of popular music as a member of the influential electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, and for his unusually light-hearted style of music.-Biography:Perrey was...
. The Perrey-Kingsley duo went on to record Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the Moog
Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the Moog
Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the Moog was the second collaboration between electronic musicians Perrey and Kingsley. It was released in 1967 on Vanguard Records, an independent label in Santa Monica, California.-Track listing:...
and subsequently went their separate ways. Kingsley then recorded Music To Moog By, a classic Moog album consisting mainly of cover songs, originally by The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
, Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
, and Simon and Garfunkel
Simon and Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel are an American duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. They formed the group Tom & Jerry in 1957 and had their first success with the minor hit "Hey, Schoolgirl". As Simon & Garfunkel, the duo rose to fame in 1965, largely on the strength of the...
. His next effort, titled First Moog Quartet, is a compilation of live recordings from his nationwide tour featuring no fewer than four Moog synthesizers. Some of these compositions are more experimental, featuring spoken word
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
and beat poetry backed by synthetic noises and tones. Kingsley moved beyond the Moog, and later pioneered the use of the earliest Fairlight
Fairlight CMI
The Fairlight CMI is a digital sampling synthesizer. It was designed in 1979 by the founders of Fairlight, Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie, and based on a dual-6800 microprocessor computer designed by Tony Furse in Sydney, Australia...
and Synclavier
Synclavier
The Synclavier System was an early digital synthesizer, polyphonic digital sampling system, and music workstation, manufactured by New England Digital Corporation, Norwich, VT. The original design and development of the Synclavier prototype occurred at Dartmouth College with the collaboration of...
digital synthesizers.
"Popcorn"
Kingsley was quoted in 2005 as saying that in 1969 he was listening to a popcorn machine and thought he could make a tune out of it. He spent the next day playing his Moog synth looking for a catchy riff. He then constructed the song in the studio entirely on the Moog, resulting in "PopcornPopcorn (instrumental)
"Popcorn" is an early electronic pop instrumental, originally composed by Gershon Kingsley in 1969 on his album Music to Moog By. The same year this tune was released and recorded at Audio Fidelity Records label in New York City....
". Kingsley released the track 87 days later on the album Music To Moog By, and it soon became the first international electronic dance hit.
Many artists have covered "Popcorn", including Hot Butter
Hot Butter
Hot Butter was an instrumental cover band fronted by the keyboard player Stan Free. The other band members were Dave Mullaney, John Abbott, Bill Jerome, Steve Jerome, and Danny Jordan. They are best known for their 1972 cover of the Moog synthpop instrumental, "Popcorn", originally recorded by its...
, Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and...
, Aphex Twin
Aphex Twin
Richard David James , best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an Irish-born electronic musician and composer described as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music"...
, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Marsheaux
Marsheaux
Marsheaux is a Greek synthpop duo formed in Athens in 2003. The group is composed of vocalists, songwriters and keyboardists Marianthi Melitsi and Sophie Sarigiannidou. The name Marsheaux is derived from the first syllable of each band member's name. Both members sing almost exclusively in English...
, Muse
Muse (band)
Muse are an English alternative rock band from Teignmouth, Devon, formed in 1994. The band consists of school friends Matthew Bellamy , Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard...
, and The Muppets
The Muppets
The Muppets are a group of puppet characters created by Jim Henson starting in 1954–55. Although the term is often used to refer to any puppet that resembles the distinctive style of The Muppet Show, the term is both an informal name and legal trademark owned by the Walt Disney Company in reference...
. The song has not been covered by Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
though mislabeled copies of the song are in circulation. A version by hardcore artist Rezidents is mislabeled as by avant-garde group The Residents
The Residents
The Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
.
Other notable works
Kingsley is credited with composing "Baroque HoedownBaroque Hoedown
"Baroque Hoedown" was created by early synthesizer pioneers Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley in 1966. The composition was once described as being a "harpsichord gone country". It later became the theme song for Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade and for a time, the Electrical Water...
", used by The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
for the Main Street Electrical Parade
Main Street Electrical Parade
The Main Street Electrical Parade is a regularly scheduled parade, created by Bob Jani and project director Ron Miziker, famous for its long run at Disneyland at the Disneyland Resort most summers between 1972–1974, 1977–1982, and 1985-1996...
at its theme parks; and "The Savers", best known as the theme for the game show The Joker's Wild
The Joker's Wild
The Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times during the 1970s through the 1990s. Contestants answered questions based on categories that were determined randomly by a mechanism resembling a slot machine....
. He also wrote the logo sting for WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...
in Boston that appears throughout the United States on PBS programming produced by the station.
Partial discography
- 1966 The In Sound from Way Out!The In Sound From Way Out! (Perrey and Kingsley album)The In Sound from Way Out! was the first collaboration between electronic musicians Perrey and Kingsley and considered to be the first-ever mainstream electronic music album. It was released in 1966 on Vanguard Records, an independent label in Santa Monica, California.Perrey and Kingsley came...
- 1967 Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the MoogKaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the MoogKaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the Moog was the second collaboration between electronic musicians Perrey and Kingsley. It was released in 1967 on Vanguard Records, an independent label in Santa Monica, California.-Track listing:...
- 1969 Music To Moog By
- 1970 First Moog Quartet
- 1970 Switched-On Gershwin
- 1991 The Essential Perrey and Kingsley
- 2005 Voices from the Shadow
- 2006 God Is a Moog
- 2007 Vanguard Visionaries: Perrey and Kingsley
- 2009 Silent Night, Bloody Night (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Film scores
- 1969 Sam's SongSam's SongSam's Song is a 1969 drama film starring Robert De Niro. It was directed by John Broderick and John Shade.-External links:* on the Internet Movie Database...
- 1970 Ha-Timhoni (The Dreamer)
- 1973 Sugar CookiesSugar Cookies (film)Sugar Cookies is a 1973 soft-core crime film directed by Theodore Gershuny. It was co-written by future president of Troma Entertainment Lloyd Kaufman and produced by future director Oliver Stone....
- 1974 Silent Night, Bloody NightSilent Night, Bloody NightNot to be confused with a more controversial and popular film called Silent Night, Deadly Night.Silent Night, Bloody Night is a low-budget 1974 psychological horror film directed by Theodore Gershuny. It stars Patrick O'Neal and cult actress Mary Woronov in leading roles, with John Carradine in a...