With over 2,500 attendees, more than 40 electronic music performances, 70 presenters/speakers, and over 90 exhibitors, the first SYNTHPLEX Music Conference was a success. The three-day celebration of electronic music was held at the LA Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel Convention Center on March 28-31.
The event organizers report that one of the main highlights was Grammy-nominated composer Tom Holkenborg “Junkie XL”, who delivered the keynote speech. Holkenborg has collaborated with James Cameron and Peter Jackson on Alita: Battle Angel and Mortal Engines, as well as filmmakers George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) and Tim Miller (Deadpool). His Q&A was standing room only.
Synth pioneer Harold Faltermeyer presented the attendees with the story behind “Axel F” from Beverly Hills Cop, his work with Giorgio Moroder and the upcoming Top Gun 2020 with Hans Zimmer.
Other talent included Thomas Dolby, Mark Isham, Michael Abels, Allee Willis, Dave Smith MIDI Inventor/Sequential, Craig Anderton, Shelly Peiken, Russell Brower, Michael Lehmann Boddicker, Germaine Franco, among others.
SYNTHPLEX 2019 held a two-hour event for kids to explore and create sounds with a variety of synths from manufacturers including KORG, Arturia, Roland, Teenage Engineering, Moog and many more. They had the opportunity to enter the SYNTHPLEX Pop-up Museum to see legacy synthesizers. Dr. Annie Bosler then talked to attendees and the Milliken Arts Magnet Middle School Students about techniques for approaching and ‘acing’ upcoming auditions for high school and college.
The SYNTHPLEX Pop-Up Synth Museum had over 20 synthesizers including the Optigon, Michael Lehmann Boddicker’s own Modular MOOG, Polymoog, Roland Jupiter 8, Mellotron, a newly rebuilt eMu Modular, Oberheim Six Voice and beautiful Ondes Martenot for attendees to play and sample. Three time Emmy Award winner Casey Young was at the helm the entire show with visits from CJ Vanston, Steve Porcaro, Dave Rossum & Marco Alpert.
SYNTHPLEX 2019 played host to over 40 electronic acts from Mark Isham, Vinnie Colaiuta, Lisa Bella Donna, Unique Molecule, Michael Levine & Reinhold Heil, Thomas Dolby, among others. Downtempo electronic music from JVMIE and all capped off by BT performing an amazing set followed by a Q&A session on all things lifestyle and electronic music. Many performances were demonstrated by Symbion. Sound systems by Verity Audio America & Tectonics Audio Labs with Soundcraft Ui24 front ends literally shook the foundations. Backline by SSTsynths.com provided vintage and contemporary keys with thanks to Moog, Roland, Sequential, Arturia & Yamaha.
SYNTHPLEX had two DIY build a synthesizer workshops, where people put together and discovered the inner workings of custom synth modules.
SYNTHPLEX exhibitors included Arturia’s MicroFreak, the Panharmonium from Rossum-Electro, a modern take on the Optigon dubbed the Panoptigon from Quilter Labs, a hardware recreation of the Roland TR-808 and newly released updates to the Prophet XL from Sequential. Spectrasonics had 43 computer workstations with synthesizers all seamlessly interfaced to Omnisphere 2.6. SYNTHPLEX even snuck in The Moog One thanks to Sweetwater's Daniel Fisher.
More information can be found at synthplex.com
