Wendy Carlos - Biography
Wendy Carlos was a noted pioneer in the use of the Moog. She's also recognized as one of the earliest artists to use electronic instrumentation to interpret classical music.
Wendy Carlos was born Walter Carlos on November 14th, 1939, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He began his musical education with piano lessons at six. He later enrolled at Brown University. As a post-grad at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, he pursued a Master of Arts degree studying with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening. After obtaining his degrees, he moved to Manhattan and worked first as a recording engineer. After meeting Robert Moog, he worked with the synthesizer man and added touch sensitivity to the inventor's keyboard interface.
Carlos released his debut, in 1967, Moog 900 Series - Electronic Music Systems (1967 R. A. Moog Company). The album's pieces, "Dialogues for Piano and Two Loudspeakers" and "Variations for Flute and Electronic Sound," served primarily to demonstrate the Moog's technical abilities. His next album, produced by Rachel Elkind, was a surprise success. Switched-On Bach (1968-Columbia) was a sizable hit — in fact, the first classical LP to be certified Platinum. The proceeds of the sales funded the construction of a home studio in a brownstone shared by Carlos and Elkind. A similarly styled album, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer (1969 Columbia), followed, covering the works of more Baroque composers.
In 1970, Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog developed a 10-band vocoder device inspired by the designs of pioneering electronic and acoustic engineer Homer Dudley. In 1971, Stanley Kubrick commissioned Carlos to perform the score for his dystopian film, A Clockwork Orange. The album, Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange (1972 Columbia), included music from the film, unused cues completed afterward, and other Carlos compositions. The same year, Carlos released Sonic Seasonings (1972 Columbia), a double album combining environmental noise, acoustic and electronic outfits, in essence creating new age and presaging Brian Eno's development of ambient music by several years. That year Carlos also underwent sexual re-assignment surgery and changed her name to Wendy.
Switched-On Bach II (1973 Columbia), was in the vein of earlier works, although it added the timbre a Yamaha Electone organ. Oddly, both it and By Request (1975 Columbia) were credited to Walter Carlos. The first album attributed to Wendy Carlos was Switched-On Brandenburgs (1979 CBS). An interview with Playboy focused, singlemindedly and sensationally on Carlos' sex change and the media attention that followed tended to focus more on that than Carlos' music. Carlos's music returned to the forefront when she and Elkind wrote the score for Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, The Shining. Another score, for Tron followed, resulting in the release of Tron - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1982 CBS). Unfortunately, her end-title music featuring the Royal Albert Hall Organ was replaced with a song by Journey (after Supertramp backed out), and the music that originally was composed for the lightcycle scene wasn't used.
Digital Moonscapes (1984 CBS) reflected Carols's passion for solar eclipses. The alternate tunings in Beauty in the Beast (1986 Audion) reflected an interest in various non-western musical traditions. Secrets of Synthesis (1987 CBS) is a recorded lecture with audio examples. In 1988, Carlos teamed with "Weird Al" Yankovic for the Prokofiev parody, Peter & the Wolf / Carnival of the Animals - Part II (1988 CBS). Switched-On Bach 2000 (1992 Telarc) followed four years later.
In 1998, Carlos was back in the news when she sued Scottish singer Momus for $22 million. She claimed that Momus's song "Walter Carlos," in which he suggested that if time travel were possible, Wendy could go back in time and marry Walter, was defamation of character. As a result, the song was removed from The Little Red Songbook and Momus resorted to the patronage system for his follow-up, to pay for his legal fees. Three years later, she released a two-volume set Rediscovering Lost Scores (East Side Digital), featuring previously out-of-print material, and music not used for The Shining, Tron and A Clockwork Orange.