GERSHON KINGSLEY

KINGSLEY--Gershon. (1922-2019). Composer, musician, conductor and electronic music pioneer Gershon Kingsley began a musical journey down another path on December 10, 2019 - passing away at his home in Manhattan at the age of 97 after a wonderfully rich and rewarding life. He is survived by daughters Melinda Kingsley-LaPlaca and Alisse Kingsley, son-in-law Victor LaPlaca and his grandson Max. The love of his life, Lillian Bozinoff-Kingsley, predeceased him in 2018. Best known as an innovative artist of electronic music, Gershon played a pivotal role in popularizing the new synthesizer sound in commercials which garnered two "Clio" Awards, and with his group The First Moog Quartet, which toured internationally and brought the first multi-media show of synthesized music ever at Carnegie Hall. His original tune, Popcorn, was the first international hit pop song to utilize the genre. Since it was first released on the classic record Music to Moog By in 1969, Popcorn has been recorded several dozen times by other artists and has been featured in many television commercials and film. He was also the composer of the electronic theme song, Baroque Hoedown, with Jean-Jacques Perrey of the Perrey-Kingsley Duo, which became the theme song for the Main Street Electrical Parade, the live production that has been performed at Disney parks worldwide for decades. Kingsley also enjoyed a prolific career composing, arranging and conducting in the musical theatre world. Credits include the Broadway production of The Entertainer starring Lawrence Olivier, a "Tony" Award nomination for Best Musical Direction in the Broadway musical hit, La Plume de Ma Tante, two "Obie" Awards for his Off- Broadway work, Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, including Porgy & Bess, Jamaica, Ernest in Love, The Cradle Will Rock and Fly Blackbird. Kingsley also served as musical director for the Robert Joffrey Ballet, Josephine Baker and the highly-acclaimed television special The World of Kurt Weill, starring Lotte Lenya. Two completely different Kingsley productions (an opera and a musical) based on the life of Columbus were launched in 1992, Tierra in Munich, and Cristobal in New York City. Kingsley also composed frequently for The Kom(m)odchen, a German political-literary cabaret and extensively for television and motion pictures. His music for the PBS WGBH logo continues to be used to this day, and his music for A New Voice in the Wilderness won him an "Emmy" Award. As a composer, Kingsley was also known for his Jewish works, including Shabbat For Today (which brought Moog synthesizers into the synagogue and was broadcast nationally), and The Fifth Cup with Theodore Bikel. Voices From the Shadow, a theatrical concert piece based on the poetry of the holocaust, had its premiere in 1998 at Lincoln Center in New York City. He later partnered with librettist Michael Kunze for RAOUL, an Opera based on the life of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish tradesman who saved thousand of jews from certain death in the Nazi concentration camps. Born Goetz Gustav Ksinski in Bochum, Westfalia, Germany on October 28, 1922, Gershon grew up in Berlin, but, in the rise of Nazism, separated from his family at age 15 to live and work on a kibbutz in Palestine (later, Israel) in 1938, where he became a self-taught pianist. After serving as a gaffir (mounted patrolman) and studying at the Jerusalem Conservatory, he came to America in 1946 and at the age of twenty-four finished high school at night and attended the Los Angeles nserCovatory of Music (now known as Cal Arts). Up until his passing, Gershon continued to compose and improvise, and occasionally shared new recordings on his Soundcloud. With a twinkle in his eye he would always say, "I'm not ready to decompose just yet."