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NEEMFest 2026 Workshop Series
Presenter Schedule & Workshop Notes
Saturday, September 19, 2026
10:30 AM — Don Slepian
Workshop Title: “DAWless Performance can be Flawless Performance”
Description: Don Slepian will offer a workshop demonstrating his techniques for live electronic music performance without backing tracks from a digital audio workstation such as Logic. Alternative controllers will be featured.
Session Length: 30 minutes
Bio: Electronic Music Pioneer Don Slepian is a true pioneer of electronic music. He started composing in 1969 and released his first compilation cassette in September of 1978. He left Hawaii and came to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, where he was “Artist in Residence” in computer music for the next two years. In 1980 he released three more cassette tapes on the Hawaiian record label Plumeria Productions: The Sea of Bliss, New Dawn, and Open Spaces. In 1981 he self-released his first LP, Computer Don’t Breakdown. In 1982 he signed to Fortuna Records, who brought his music to a much wider audience with several releases throughout the ’80s. The same year he released a collaborative tape with Lauri Paisley as Synarios called Uncontrolled Voltage in a classic electronica style. Slepian combines unique skills in music and electronics with a lifetime of improvised keyboard music performance. Born into a scientific family, Slepian showed both musical and technical talent early in life. In 1968, he programmed computers and built electronic music circuitry, sculpting sound with classic electronic music studio tape techniques. Starting in 1972, he was a tester on the early internet as a member of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He was also a synthesizer soloist with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of Honolulu Theatre for Youth, and ARP Synthesizer Sales Rep for Hawaii. His latest LP contains all the tracks from his extremely rare debut tape Electronic Music from the Rainbow Isle (1978), plus two tracks from Uncontrolled Voltage (his 1982 release with Paisley) and one track from 1982’s Rhythm of Life tape, a Fortuna Records release.
11:10 AM — Johnny Tomasiello
Workshop Title: “Signal to Sound: Composing with Brainwaves and Physical Gesture”
Description: A workshop focused on working with live sensor input and data parsing for musical applications, drawing on Johnny’s experience with brainwave sensing systems and gestural/motion-based devices, integrating these tools into compositional and performance workflows.
Format: Observational and participatory — one or two attendees will be invited to interact with the system while Johnny explains and takes questions.
Tech: EEG headset and gestural sensors
Session Length: 30 minutes
Audience: Accessible to non-technical musicians
Bio: Multidisciplinary artist, composer, and researcher investigating reciprocal relationships between perception, physiology, and computational environments. Drawing on neuroscience, psychophysics, and biofeedback, he develops performances, installations, moving image works, and custom software that bring otherwise inaccessible aspects of perception into conscious experience.
11:50 AM — Robert Dorschel
Workshop Title: “SHOW AND TELL: Bringing the Synth Petting Zoo into a curated session”
Description: A brief walk-through and group conversation about the gear at the Synth Petting Zoo — aimed at attendees who might otherwise feel hesitant to touch the instruments or unsure what to do with a particular piece. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own music toy — the more obscure, the better. (“Synth Petting Zoo” plays on the idea of petting/interacting with synthesizers the way one would touch animals at a petting zoo, with the instruments cast as the “animals.”)
Session Length: 30 minutes
Space/Tech Needs: None specific — the main requirement is other attendees bringing their own gear/instruments (“animals”) for the petting zoo.
Bio: For decades, Robert has been doing his best attempt at putting melodic pieces and moral-of-the-story tales together, usually with MIDI-triggered video and little to no budget to speak of — all the money already spent on gear. No one has told him it’s okay to stop yet.
Sunday, September 20, 2026
11:10 AM — David Berends
Workshop Title: “The Composer’s Cut: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Madness”
Description: A “composer’s cut” deconstruction of several of the pieces he’ll be performing. He’ll walk through his creative process and the role technology plays in bringing it all about.
Session Length: 30 minutes
Format: Lecture with demonstration on a stage piano
Bio: From the age of four, when he first heard the grannies in Sunday school plunking out hymns on the upright, composer David Berends has been spellbound by the harmonies, melodies and structures of this mystical aural art form we call music. Classically trained in piano performance at the Peabody Conservatory and the Westminster Choir College, and in music theory at UPenn and Princeton University, his informal training came through countless gigs, recording sessions and jams with artists including guitarist Stanley Jordan, Rock’n’Roll pioneer Chuck Berry, prog rockers Tank, New Wave band The Name, and Philly legends G. Calvin Weston and Tony “TNT” Jones. Over the years, Berends has released four CDs of his original piano compositions on classical labels Albany Records and I Virtuosi Records while also leading a straight-ahead piano trio performing many of his jazz charts. Recently, much of his musical focus has been on recording and performing with numerous jazz, fusion, and electronica musicians throughout the Northeast. Berends is also a founding member of Two Bald Wizards (ongoing) featuring the brilliant hand percussionist Michael Mironov. As a solo electronica artist, Berends creates music both challenging and pleasing, both tonal and not, incorporating elements of jazz, rock, classical, cinema, ambient and experimental.
11:50 AM — Howard Moskovitz (electro-music.org)
Topic: electro-music.org — Mission
Description: electro-music.org’s mission: posting musicians’ music on the community website, supporting the e-music community, hosting/sharing independent from commercial radio and platforms like Bandcamp, no algorithmic curation or airplay politics — artists control their own radio station, and discovery happens via community recommendation. The site is evolving into independent radio streaming. Howard’s involvement with electro-music.org goes back roughly 30 years, since its start.
Bio: Howard Moskovitz has graduate degrees in both music composition and electrical engineering. He began working on electronic music in 1967 with William Hoskins at Jacksonville University. He received an MFA in electronic music from Mills College where he studied with Robert Ashley, Stanley Lunetta, Darius Milhaud and John Cage. While working as a freelance composer, Howard earned a Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981. He then moved to Pennsylvania to work as a designer of the first DSP micro-circuit at Bell Labs, where he met Bill. Howard started electro-music.com in 2002. The community has produced dozens of festivals in the USA and Europe.
12:30 PM — Howard Moskovitz (COMMAMBIENT)
Workshop Title: “COMMAMBIENT LUNCH & PLAY” (a “Collective Hum” experience)
Description: A workshop centered on playing with a cell phone and/or other devices using a live app Howard developed for musical applications — framed as a “Community Ambient” performance. The app will be free to download and install, available for both Android and iPhone.
Format: Observational and participatory — all attendees invited to join a Community Music Ambient Droning session using their cell phones.
Tech: The cell phone app itself
Session Length: 30 minutes
Audience: Accessible to everyone