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Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist. Ned Lagin interview with David Gans on KPFA, February 3, 2001Ned Lagin interview with David Gans, August 2001 in: Gans, David. Conversations with the Dead, The Grateful Dead Interview Book, Da Capo Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2002. pp. 343–389.
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."Mini Helps 'Grateful Dead' Compose Rock", Computerworld, August 13, 1975, page 33"Dead Go To Computerized Synthesizer", Billboard, September 6, 1975, pp. 19 and 29
He is known for his electronic music composition Seastones, for performing with the Grateful Dead, and for his photography and art.
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.
While at MIT, 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,Relix, Volume 18, No.3, page 31 ("Summer Issue"): Ned Lagin – An Interview with Nick Skidmore [2] whom he met in Boston and saw perform many times in New York and Boston in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After becoming acquainted with each other, Evans wrote out some of his tunes for Lagin. During this period, his piano teachers included Dean Earl (a former Charlie Parker sideman) and Ray Santisi (a sideman with Parker, Stan Getz and Dexter Gordon). He also studied jazz improvisation with saxophonist Lee Konitz. Throughout his studies, Lagin played piano in the MIT Concert Jazz Band and the MIT Jazz Quintet;"Collegiate Jazz Festival 1969" program, Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, March 14 and 15, 1969, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana both groups were led by Herb Pomeroy, a former 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 Marin County in the Bay Area.Douglas Kahn, "Between a Bach and a Bard Place: Productive Constraint in Early Computer Arts" in MediaArtHistories, edited by Oliver Grau, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010. pg. 441. "Seastones" album description from Rykodisc online catalog
From 1970 to 1975, Lagin contributed Hammond B3 organ, electric piano, and clavichord to material of his choice (primarily—but not exclusively—songs with long instrumental passages) at several Grateful Dead concerts. August 14–15, 1971 Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA—Ned Lagin 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.The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Volume I: An In-Depth Guide to the Music of the Grateful Dead on Tape, 1959–1974 – by Michael M. Getz, John R. Dwork, Henry Holt and Company, New York; 1st edition (May 15, 1998). The Deadhead's Taping Compendium, Volume II: An In-Depth Guide to the Music of the Grateful Dead on Tape, 1975–1985 – by Michael M. Getz, John R. Dwork, Henry Holt and Company, New York; 1st edition (August 2, 1999). John W. Scott, Mike Dolgushkin, Stu Nixon, Deadbase, Jr. Deadbase, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1995.
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 quadraphonic vocal system of the Wall of Sound PA, with 9600 watts routed through more than two hundred speakers.
The March 17, 1975 cancelled Grateful Dead studio session became a Seastones session with Crosby and included "Ned's Birthday Jam." Blues For Allah entry in The Compleat Grateful Dead Discography http://tcgdd.freeyellow.com . Retrieved September 23, 2014Grateful Dead Live at Ace's (SNACK Rehearsal) on 1975-03-17 (March 17, 1975) [5]
Lagin and Lesh's 1974 interstitial performances are included in these live Grateful Dead albums:
A new, two CD album of Seastones was released on March 8, 2018. This album, not a re-issue, presents most but not all of the composition as originally composed but never released or heard before. For this release, Seastones was re-mixed and re-mastered in stereo. It includes most of the original 1970–1974 studio forms, those parts of Lagin's concurrent but unfinished composition L that are shared with Seastones, as well as some of the moment forms generated and incorporated into the composition from live performances that took place from 1973 to 1975. This two CD album contains 83 tracks (54 tracks on CD One and 29 tracks on CD Two) and altogether is 111 minutes long.
Lagin's images, as single photographs and paintings, and in compositions of multiple images, include nature, landscapes, sand drawings, nudes, erotica, and self-portraits. His creation of sand drawings and multi-image forms to create "fields of meaning(s)" was influenced by the rock art and imagery (petroglyphs, pictographs) of Native Americans, Australian Aboriginals, and prehistoric Europeans. Lagin's photographic, sand drawing, and painting collections and artist's books, spanning 1981–2017, include: Our Love, Metaphysics, Light in the Silence, Artifacts of Desire, Reflections of Solitude, and Light Time Geographies. Additionally, Lagin has written a collection of writings titled Notes about art, metaphysics, natural history, photography, pictures and "the natural history of picture world". From his Notes:
"when you look at a picture
the picture looks at you"
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:
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