Rich Schermerhorn is a proud volunteer at NAMM’s Museum of Making Music, located in Carlsbad, California. The museum has several positions for volunteers and Rich seems to do most of them...
Dina Pearlman-Ifil has many fond memories of growing up in her home. Her mother had a background in visual arts and her father was an engineer and inventor of the ARP synthesizers. Her pa...
Ikuo Kakehashi’s passion for music developed early in his life. Of course, he was exposed to many innovative electronic musical instruments being the son of synthesizer pioneer and Roland...
Al Murrell recalls being hooked on the Pipe Organ when he was just three years old. That special sound, which could be loud and haunting, could also be soft and soothing. As a young boy, ...
Christoph Bull is the organ professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His deep passion for music stems from his grandmother’s piano and his early days playing organ i...
Pete Brown is a Principal Software Engineer in Windows at Microsoft and oversees the company’s MIDI 2.0 implementation. He grew up in Massachusetts and was introduced to synthesizers whil...
Joe Goodman began playing gigs around the Los Angeles area since he was very young with his primary instruments being the piano and trumpet. With a Marching Band scholarship for college i...
Dave Rivard has thoroughly enjoyed his role at Roland Corporation as a sales rep. He has grown the role over the years and covered nearly every state, making connections, introducing new ...
Cosmo Watts is a multi-talented musician and songwriter who played an important role in the music products industry as a sound designer, synthesizer programmer and music teacher. Growing ...
Christy Coobatis is a college music professor whose amazing musical journey includes playing professionally before he was a teenager, beta testing guitars for Leo Fender, and helping to c...
Chris Martirano started working for Kurzweil Music Systems in 1986. For the first few years he was on the sales side of the equation, originally the district sales manager for the northea...
Starr Parodi, has actively made beautiful music for the masses in all sorts of venues. As a pianist, synthesist, composer, producer, arranger, and conductor Starr has worked on a bevy of ...
Jeff Fair, the multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, and music producer, specializes in creating soundtracks for movies, TV, and movie trailers. Forbes magazine credited Jeff and his wif...
Gregory Farmer is an enthusiastic, talented, self-taught synthesist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, performer, and producer. He has collected and plays a wide range of electronic and ac...
Dave Amels is a huge fan of the Hammond B-3 organ, which he’s played on records and with garage rock bands including Husky Team and The Reigning Sound. In the late ’80s he co-founded Voce...
David Rosenthal has been playing keyboards in Billy Joel’s band since 1993, much of that time as the music director. He’s done everything from arranging Billy’s music for live orchestra t...
Phil Burk has had a passion for electronics since he was a kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He built radio circuits before he was a teen and combined that interest with his l...
Rich Formidoni cut his teeth in the industry as a salesman in the keyboard division of Sam Ash Music in Queens, New York. That experience led to his move to Korg in 2005 as a product spec...
Jeff Nelson's mother was a sought-after pianist who had a regular gig in San Francisco playing at the Top of the Mark. As a kid, Jeff took lessons from a woman who had the best name for a...
Ryan Clement was among the first employees at Grandma’s Music in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Established by Micky Patten in 1986, the store gained a strong reputation for selling pro audio a...
Fumio Mieda was hired by the founder of KORG, Tsutomu Katoh, back in 1967. Mieda-san began working on a number of innovations as he hoped to improve the function of electronic organs. The...
Brockett Parsons is proud of the musical education he received in grade school, which was furthered by participating in the school band program at his high school. He went on to graduate ...
Dallas Smith began playing the clarinet at the age of eleven. By the time he was in high school he was in an all-star group and later focused on classical music throughout college. His l...
James Brady was front and center during the MIDI boom, working within the keyboard department at Rushworth’s Music House in Liverpool. The year was 1986 and the synthesizer was at its pea...
Jeremy Hill earned his electrical engineering degree and initially worked on missile guidance and radar tracking systems for the government. With a background and passion for recording eq...
Wayne Thompson has always felt lucky that he had a musical mentor in high school and attributes that leadership and inspiration for his long career in the music industry. Dee Wiggins was ...
Greg Mathieson spoke passionately about his career in music during his NAMM Oral History interview. He brought up some very interesting points, such as his views on working on the road vs...
Philip Springer utilized his classical piano training to pen hit songs during a long and celebrated career making music. As a result his tunes often incorporated elements of sophisticatio...
Peter Schwartz is a pianist, composer, and synthesist who has worked for KORG on such projects as the M1, Wavestation, Prophecy and OASYS. After a wonderful experience with his classical ...
Daniel Haver was heavily influenced by the music he heard at home as a kid and wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an entrepreneur. He combined his love of music with hi...
Les Deutsch is a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist in the aerospace industry who holds several patents for electronic musical instruments. His father, Ralph Deutsch, invited the s...
David Sancious always had records playing in his home growing up and his dad would take him to jazz clubs when he was just a child to sit by the stage so he could see the piano player. As...
