This is Eban Crawford playing the prototype Expressiv Infinity in one of the hallways near our workshops. The city of Durham has done a great job bringing this event to their city and the support for all of the art and venues that are playing a role at MoogFest. I’d love to come back but will need to take off a few years to recover from the stress of signing up for events and workshops that fill up minutes after the schedule goes live, and even then, it turns out that your reservation doesn’t have to be respected if one of the MoogFest staff members decides to let walk-ins enter a workshop early thus bumping you because of fire code rules that only allow so many people in the room. Getting booted from the Robert Rich performance also hurt my enthusiasm. The solution next time, I suppose, would be to purchase the $350 VIP option, which allows the attendee to register their interests before the cheaper $99 general admission guest. While the organizer might think their pricing is fair, I don’t think they take into account those who are incurring greater costs due to coming from out of state and out of the country. The truth is that I don’t know how I’d organize it any differently for such a niche and eclectic event.

Building circuits at the LittleBits workshop, where we are learning to make our own optoelectronic sequencers and noisemakers, is a blast.

Our last performance was in the middle of the afternoon and it was of Suzanne Ciani performing on and demoing her Buchla synth. Suzanne is a pioneer in electronic instruments and sounds having created an iconic bottle of Coca-Cola being opened sound and a wide body of work for film and television over her career. She also holds the distinction of being the first woman to be the solo composer of a major Hollywood film. Most recently, she’s been working with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, who has been gaining attention as a Eurorack synthesizer artist.

Suzanne Ciani’s Buchla synthesizer.

Heading south out of North Carolina and traveling through South Carolina on our way back to Atlanta for the flight home tomorrow. It was a truly great adventure and learning experience.