This is exciting. Press release from the Moog Foundation:
The Bob Moog Foundation and Asheville composer/musician Dan Lewis announce the world premiere and release party for a historic live concert recording, Bob Moog Live. The premiere event will take place on October 10, 2010, at the Lexington Avenue Brewery in Asheville, NC, from 3:30–6:00 p.m. Admission is $7, with proceeds benefiting the Bob Moog Foundation.
Bob Moog Live is the only known recording of synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog publicly performing on his famous Minimoog, the best selling analog synthesizer of all time. Created in 1970, the Minimoog celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The Bob Moog Live recording took place on November 23, 1980, at the Asheville Art Museum and captured a performance by Moog, Abbott & Lewis. Local musicians Dan Lewis and Mike Abbott, an accomplished synthesist, rounded out the trio on keyboards, guitar, and ukelin. Lewis and Abbott performed with Moog twice in Asheville in the summer and fall of 1980. The CD features the latter performance along with sterling rehearsal sessions.
Lewis and Abbott composed all the music on the CD. Lewis, who preserved the recordings for the last 30 years, brought this project to the forefront. He produced the album to highlight a historic event and to create a fundraising mechanism for the Bob Moog Foundation. The CD, described as electronic neoclassical music, features excerpts from Moog, Abbott & Lewis’s live concert tape. Subtitled “The Gig Tape,” it was originally recorded on 1/4-inch analog tape, thanks to Mike Abbott’s forethought.
The CD will be available exclusively through the Bob Moog Foundation’s online store beginning on October 11, 2010. In addition to original music and instrumentation, the CD features Moog speaking candidly between songs about a variety of subjects ranging from the capabilities of electronic musical instruments to his life during that time period. At the time of the recording, Moog had recently left the company he started 25 years prior and moved from New York to North Carolina, where he started a new business, Big Briar, Inc.