Gershon Kingsley


Gershon Kingsley was a contemporary German-American composer, a pioneer of electronic music and the Moog synthesizer, a partner in the electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, founder of the First Moog Quartet, and writer of rock-inspired compositions for Jewish religious ceremonies. Kingsley is most famous for his 1969 influential electronic instrumental composition "Popcorn".
Kingsley conducted and arranged many Broadway musicals, and composed for film, television shows and commercials. His compositions were eclectic and vary between avant-garde and pop styles. Kingsley also composed classical chamber works, and his opera Raoul was premiered in Bremen, Germany in 2008. His work was recognized with a Tony Award nomination for Best Conductor and Musical Director, two Clio Awards for his work in advertising music, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bob Moog Foundation.
Kingsley died on December 10, 2019 at the age of 97 in Manhattan, New York.

Early life

Kingsley was born Götz Gustav Ksinski in 1922 in Bochum, Weimar Republic, the son of Marie Christina, a homemaker, and Max Ksinski, a carpet dealer and pianist. His father was born Jewish and his mother, originally Catholic, converted to Judaism. He grew up in Berlin where his parents ran a large carpet shop. They had originally met in Essen, when his father, returning from Berlin on a business trip, had dropped in to a wine bar managed by two sisters, one of whom soon became Kingsley's mother. The elder Ksinski had spent the evening playing the piano in the bar, after which romance quickly blossomed.
Kingsley became a member of a Zionist youth movement and at the age of 15 left Germany in 1938, a few days before Kristallnacht and joined kibbutz Ein Harod, Mandatory Palestine, while his parents stayed behind at that time. At the kibbutz he taught himself to play the piano. He joined the Hagana Jewish Settlement Police and also played jazz in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He studied at the Jerusalem conservatory of music.
His parents and brother had escaped to Cuba, from where, eventually, they succeeded in obtaining visas for the United States, where Kingsley met up with them eight years later.

Musical career

His career as a pop musician took off with the release of The In Sound from Way Out! album in 1966, which he recorded with Jean-Jacques Perrey. The Perrey and Kingsley duo went on to record , released the next year, and subsequently went their separate ways. Kingsley then pursued a solo career recording Music to Moog By, released in 1969, a classic Moog album consisting mainly of cover songs, originally by The Beatles, Beethoven, and Simon and Garfunkel, but there also was original material, like his best known composition, Popcorn, which became his "signature song". His next music effort was with a band called First Moog Quartet: they recorded only an album titled First Moog Quartet, released in 1970, which consisted of live recordings from his nationwide tour featuring four Moog synthesizers. Some of these compositions are more experimental, featuring spoken word and beat poetry backed by synthetic noises and tones. Kingsley then moved beyond the Moog, and later pioneered the use of the earliest Fairlight and Synclavier digital synthesizers.

"Popcorn"

Many artists have covered "Popcorn", including Hot Butter, Jean Michel Jarre, Aphex Twin, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Marsheaux, Muse, Crazy Frog and The Muppets. The composition was used in the Soviet animated series Nu, pogodi!. Also particularly interesting is the cover version of the Italian pop group La Strana Società from 1972, whose ensemble back then included Umberto Tozzi, who was still unknown at the time, but which would later achieve world fame with hits such as "Gloria", "Tu" and "Ti Amo".

Other notable works

Kingsley is also credited with composing the song "Baroque Hoedown", released in their 1967 album, used by Walt Disney Productions for the Main Street Electrical Parade at its theme parks; and the song "The Savers", best known as the theme for the game show The Joker's Wild. He also wrote the logo sting for WGBH-TV in Boston, that appears throughout the United States on PBS programming produced by the station.

Partial discography