Serge Tcherepnin

Serge Alexandrovich Tcherepnin (; born 2 February 1941) is a Russian-American composer and electronic-instrument builder of Russian-Chinese parentage. Tcherepnin is noted for creating the Serge Modular synthesizer. Biography Serge Tcherepnin was born in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, the son of composer Aleksandr Nikolayevich Tcherepnin and grandson of composer Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin. His mother was Chinese pianist Lee Hsien Ming. An online biography of Alexander by Phillip Ramey, Vice-President of The Tcherepnin Society, includes a photograph of the family and shows Serge at a young age. Serge had his first instruction in harmony with Nadia Boulanger and studied from 1958 to 1963 at Harvard University with Leon Kirchner and Billy Jim Layton. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1960. In 1961 he studied at the Darmstadt Vacation Courses with Luigi Nono. He then studied in Europe with Pierre Boulez, Herbert Eimert, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. From 1968 to 1970 he participated in the Intermedia Program at New York University. As an instructor at CalArts under Morton Subotnick, Serge was exposed to some of the earliest modular synthesizers designed by Don Buchla. This environment led Serge to develop his own eponymous modular synthesizer system called the Serge Modular. Electronics were manufactured by his own company Serge Modular Music Systems, which was officially founded in 1974 and occupied various locations in California, including Hollywood and an office on Haight Street in San Francisco. After closing the company in 1986, he returned to France.