Peter Zinovieff
| Peter Zinovieff | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 January 1933 (age 83) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Inventor |
Peter Zinovieff (born 1933) is a British engineer and inventor of Russian ethnicity, most notable for his EMS company, which made the famous VCS3 synthesizer in the late 1960s. The synthesizer was used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and White Noise, and Krautrock groups like Kraftwerk as well as more pop-oriented artists, including David Bowie.
Zinovieff was born on 26 January 1933; his parents, Leo Zinovieff and Sofka, née Princess Sophia Dolgorouky, were both Russian aristocrats, who met in London after their families had emigrated to escape the Russian Revolution and soon divorced. During World War II he and his brother Ian lived with their grandparents in Guildford and then with their father in Sussex. He attended Guildford Royal Grammar School, Gordonstoun School, and Oxford University, where he earned a doctorate in geology.
Zinovieff's work followed research at Bell Labs by Max Mathews and Jean-Claude Risset, and an MIT thesis (1963) by David Alan Luce. In 1966–67, Zinovieff, Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson ran Unit Delta Plus, an organisation to create and promote electronic music. It was based in the studio Zinovieff had built, in a shed at his house in Putney, located 49 Deodar Road, by the Thames (It is to be noted that his studio was later partially destroyed by a flood of the river). EMS grew out of MUSYS, which was a performance controller operating as an analogue-digital hybrid. It was a synthesiser system which Zinovieff developed with the help of David Cockerell and Peter Grogono, and used two DEC PDP-8 minicomputers and a piano keyboard. Unit Delta Plus ran a concert of electronic music at the Watermill Theatre in 1966, with a light show. In early 1967 they performed in concerts at The Roundhouse, at which the Carnival of Light was also played; they split up later in 1967.Paul McCartney had visited the studio, but Zinovieff had little interest in popular music.
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