Richard Lainhart, 1953-2011

I met Richard in the mid-eighties, when My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg™ was start­ing an inde­pend­ent label spe­cial­iz­ing in elec­tron­ic music, called Periodic Music. Richard was a com­poser and a for­mid­able multi-instrumentalist who was ever inter­ested in explor­ing new son­ic aven­ues; a lot of the stuff he put on the sole CD he made for Periodic, These Last Days, was played on the then-relatively new-fangled Chapman Stick. Richard’s com­pos­ing eth­os was of course deeply influ­enced by the pion­eers of elec­tron­ic music, with whom he worked and stud­ied (his remin­is­cences of Bob Moog, for instance, are avail­able here). But while many of his pieces were based on pat­terns and repe­ti­tions that sum­mon to mind Glass and Reich, Richard’s approach was more seem­ingly con­cerned with evok­ing a kind of com­plex serenity. His music encour­aged reflec­tion but also rewar­ded deep engage­ment; I don’t mean any kind of back­han­ded com­pli­ment when I say it was some of the least intim­id­at­ing elec­tron­ic music I’d ever heard. And Richard him­self was always a joy to be around. A big man, he had a def­in­ite pres­ence, but also a bit of a Cheshire Cat qual­ity; his words were always well-chosen even when they were few, and there was always a kind of drollery dan­cing around in his eyes and his smile. His wife and con­stant help­mate and inspir­a­tion, Caroline Meyers, com­prised one of the most awe­some couples I’d ever met; incred­ibly friendly and open but also so intim­ately attuned to each oth­er that you sensed they were always enjoy­ing a kind of private joke. Not a mali­cious joke, mind you, but an amus­ing one non­ethe­less. (They were also great cat people, always a plus with me.)

One of my most pleas­ur­able Richard sight­ings was rel­at­ively recent; April of 2010, to be exact. I had gone down to Le Poisson Rouge to catch an extremely rare American per­form­ance by the musi­cian Anthony Moore, one of the co-founders of Slapp Happy (along with my old pal Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause). Moore was doing a set with young musi­cian #Arp, as part of a series pair­ing new-and-old school elec­tron­ics folks. Prior to the duo set, Moore did some pieces with piano and tape loops, and after it was done he thanked Richard Lainhart for lend­ing him the vin­tage Revox reel-to-reel he used. Richard was in the house, I found him and Caroline, and marveled over the fact that Richard knew, well, pretty much every­body, and after the show Richard very kindly intro­duced me to Moore, also a lovely chap. (My con­ver­sa­tion with Anthony pro­duced the fol­low­ing immor­tal exchange: GK: “I was think­ing about Slapp Happy the oth­er night, because I was watch­ing this really silly film about Baader Meinhof…” AM: “As one will.”)

I was thrilled in recent years to see more and more (albeit not enough) of Richard’s mater­i­al get­ting released or rereleased on CD (not all of it, by the way, show­ing when you look him up on Amazon) and also delighted that he was gig­ging more and more, and at high-profile (for his kind of music) ven­ues such as ISSUE Project Room and The Stone. I regret that I was­n’t able to make a lot of the shows. Ron informs me that at cer­tain occa­sions Richard was received by the assembled like an old mas­ter, and by God he was cer­tainly a mas­ter. But not old, not by my clock, and so I was ter­ribly shocked to learn earli­er that Richard died yes­ter­day fol­low­ing com­plic­a­tions after sur­gery. He will be missed awfully for many reas­ons. He leaves behind a fant­ast­ic leg­acy not just of art but of friend­ship. I know that as Ron and I move for­ward with the music­al pro­ject we picked up again recently after a thirty-year break, we’ll be won­der­ing, what would Richard think, or say. And whatever we come up with will be poorer for not hav­ing had his input.