Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind · Wendy Carlos was born in Rhode Island in 1939 and studied physics and music at Brown University. In 1962 she then went to Columbia University in New York to study composition, where she worked at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center with pioneers such as Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening. She helped Robert Moog develop the Moog synthesizer and gave a great deal of advice on the keyboard and other components. In 1967 she met Rachel Elkind, a former singer who worked at the same recording studio. The two became friends and shared a house, a studio and a business.

Music and breakthrough

Together they made Switched-On Bach, released in 1968: music by Johann Sebastian Bach, played on a Moog synthesizer. Carlos had actually wanted to make an album of her own music, but Elkind suggested familiar music. The record won three Grammys and made the synthesizer popular in the 1970s. Later Carlos wrote the film music for A Clockwork Orange in 1971, The Shining in 1980 and Tron in 1982. Main Title from The Shining features in this list.

Influence

Carlos shows that electronic sounds need not be cold. Her synthesizer work opened the way to electronic film music and synth-pop. In 1979 she made public that she had been living as a woman since 1968.

Listening

• 
  Main Title · Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind, 1980
• 
  Main Title (The Shining) · Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind, 1980

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• The Dream Factory: Film Reel 5^NL Reader

See also

• Modernism, atonality and avant-garde