I first heard of Wendy Carlos more as a legend than an artist. I was too young to witness firsthand the impact of Switched-on Bach, the album that formally introduced synthesizers to the world. I came to her music through her later collaborations with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.¹ The two working together seems somehow inevitable: Both were perfectionists, poring over every detail. 

Carlos was born in Rhode Island in 1939. Her musical education began at the age of six, practicing on a drawing of a keyboard, and ended with a master’s degree in composing electronic music at Columbia University. In the 1960s, she provided important feedback on the first commercial synthesizers to be developed, pushing Bob Moog to revise and refine his devices. She convinced the w...