Quick Facts
Biography
Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist.
Lagin is considered a pioneer in the development and use of minicomputers and personal computers in real-time stage and studio music composition and performance.
He is known for his electronic music composition Seastones, for performing with the Grateful Dead, and for his photography and art.
Early years
Ned Lagin was born in New York City and raised on Long Island in Roslyn Heights, New York. Growing up, Lagin was influenced by classical and jazz music, and the modern music and art cultures of New York City in the 1960s. He started photography with a Kodak Baby Brownie Special at the age of five, and piano lessons and science, natural history, and electronic projects at the age of six.
He attended the Wheatley School in Old Westbury, New York, was awarded two National Science Foundation Scholarships, and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with the intention of becoming an astronaut. Lagin received a degree in molecular biology and humanities from MIT in 1971, where he studied with John Harbison, Gregory Tucker, David Epstein, Noam Chomsky, Gian-Carlo Rota, Salvador Luria, and Jerome Lettvin. Chomsky's generative grammar concepts inspired Lagin's thinking about creating generative music forms (1968), and Lettvin connected him to the writings of Norbert Wiener and Warren McCulloch, and more generally to cybernetics. During this period, Lagin also completed jazz coursework at the Berklee School of Music.
He was deeply influenced by the jazz world in New York City, particularly pianist Bill Evans who he met in Boston and saw perform many times in New York and Boston in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who wrote out some of his tunes for Lagin. Piano teachers included Dean Earl, a Charlie Parker sideman, and he studied jazz improvisation with Lee Konitz. He played piano in the MIT Concert Jazz Band and MIT Jazz Quintet led by Herb Pomeroy, a sideman with Duke Ellington and Stan Getz.
In the autumn of 1971, Lagin began graduate study in composition as an Irving Fine Fellow at Brandeis University, where he studied with Josh Rifkin and Seymour Shifrin. He completed a symphony, a string quartet, jazz big band pieces, and electronic pieces before dropping out and permanently relocating to the Bay Area.
Performing with the Grateful Dead
In early 1970, Lagin initiated a correspondence with Jerry Garcia after seeing the Grateful Dead at the Boston Tea Party in 1969. In May 1970, he helped facilitate a concert and free live outdoor performance featuring the band at MIT that coincided with the Kent State shootings. That summer, Lagin, at Garcia's invitation, visited San Francisco and contributed piano to "Candyman" during the American Beauty album sessions, played in several jams, and started what would become close friendships with Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh, and David Crosby.
From 1970 to 1975, Lagin sat in on Hammond B3 organ, electric piano, and clavichord during long instrumental passages at several Grateful Dead concerts. His first performances with the Grateful Dead were on November 5 and November 8, 1970 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York; his first complete concert was at Boston University's Sargent Gym on November 21, 1970.
During many 1974 Grateful Dead concerts over several tours, including Europe, he performed a middle set of electronic music, including parts of his composition "Seastones", on computer-controlled analog synthesizers with Phil Lesh on electronically processed bass. Some sets included Jerry Garcia playing guitar filtered through effects processors and Bill Kreutzmann on drums; these sets occasionally segued into the final Grateful Dead set, with Lagin performing with the Dead, including an appearance in The Grateful Dead Movie.
During the 1974 tours, he played through the vocal system of the Wall of Sound PA, in quad, with 9600 watts going through over two hundred speakers.
The March 17, 1975 cancelled Grateful Dead studio session became a "Seastones" session with David Crosby and included "Ned's Birthday Jam."
Seastones
In 1975 Lagin released Seastones, a quadraphonic album of electronic music (composed between 1970-1974), a small part of the complete Seastones composition, on Round Records and then United Artists Records.
Science career
During his professional career in science and engineering R&D (1976-2011) he worked on the earliest home computing technology with an Altair 8800; was a pre-release Apple MacIntosh software seed developer; developed real time digital video and image processing systems; biotechnology and immunology instrumentation; DNA, RNA, and peptide synthesis and sequencing hardware and artificial intelligence software; early wireless network routing systems; and consulted in ecological planning, design and habitat restoration including aerial and ecological photography for environmental studies.
Photography and art
In 1982, to learn the craft of photography, he studied Ansel Adams' three volumes on photography. Doing manual film photography for many years made Lagin think about how to see and create pictures - pre-visualize, composition, making an exposure, printing as interpretation, and about creating meaning and feeling. His photography and art influences include Ansel Adams, Elliot Porter, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Life magazine and The World We Live In, and National Geographic.
Cat Dreams
Completed in 2016, Cat Dreams is Ned Lagin's first music CD, and first public music, since 1975. Cat Dreams is formally a suite of composed pieces, and composed melodic, tonal, and rhythmic frameworks for improvisation. These are presented as solo, duo, small group, and band; acoustic, electric, electronic music. Originally composed and planned for a two CD release, Cat Dreams is the first of the two CDs that comprise the full suite of compositions.
On Cat Dreams, Lagin plays electric piano, keyboard synths (including vocals, cello, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, and others), Native American flutes, and softsynths: Ableton Live and Max for Live, Reason, Reaktor
The other musicians performing on Cat Dreams:
- Barry Finnerty - electric guitar
- Dewayne Pate - electric bass
- Barry Sless - pedal steel guitar
- Alex Maldonado - Native American flute
- Celso Alberti - drums, percussion
- Kevin Hayes - drums
- Gary Vogensen - electric guitar
- Dick Bright - violin
Community and environment
Lagin has served in Novato, California and Marin County government: Planning Commission, Downtown Plan Committee Chairperson, Economic Development Commission, Tree Task Force, Marin Conservation League Board of Directors, Marin County Flood Control Advisory Board, and chairperson for the Warner Creek Committee.