Kevin Braheny

Multi-instrumentalist/composer Kevin Braheny began exploring music at age four, starting with the piano; by age seven, he began composing his own music. He discovered woodwinds, the basis for his mature works, at 11, and played in classical, jazz, and rock settings throughout high school and college. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1971, Braheny discovered electronic music and synthesizers, and worked with electronic music pioneers like Malcom Cecil, a Moog synthesist, and Serge Tcherepnin, a modular synthesizer inventor. With Tcherepnin, Braheny built prototypes of advanced analog synths, and developed "The Mighty Serge," a modular analog system that he still uses in his music. This inventive and creative drive led Braheny to modify or build most of his own instruments, resulting in a unique, hand-tailored effect to his musical work. Most of his music features the Steiner EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument), the perfect blend of his interest in woodwinds as a child and electronics as an adult. Braheny worked as a recording engineer during the '70s and later on in his career, developed innovations in three-D binaural recording that gave his work an even more spacious, evocative feel. In 1980, Braheny released his first album, Lullabies for the Hearts of Space. 1984 saw him become the first signing on the Hearts of Space label, who reissued Lullabies and also released 1988's Galaxies, 1991's Secret Rooms, 1995's Rain, and 1996's Spell. These last two albums included collaborations with Tim Clark, another electronic music pioneer. Clark has been a composer-in-residence at New York and Toronto planetariums, along with composing music for international radio and television, and recording his own solo electronic works. ~ Heather Phares