FEATURED ARTISTS
Heitor Pereira
Heitor Pereira is establishing a reputation for bringing international flavors to mainstream, American scores. From a Santa Monica studio jammed with hundreds of instruments from around the world, Heitor has composed scores for: CURIOUS GEORGE, ASK THE DUST, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES, HAVANA NIGHTS, RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS.
Heitor attracted Hans Zimmer’s attention for his outstanding skills as a guitarist. He hired Heitor to play on a few scores, and soon Heitor was following in the footsteps of other well known musicians turned film composers: Hans, James Newton Howard, Danny Elfman. He has used the zTar as his primary performance tool for the scores of: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE II, BLACK HAWK DOWN, SPANGLISH, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, I AM SAM, THE PLEDGE, SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE, SHREK 2, MADAGASCAR, MAN ON FIRE, SPY KIDS, THE RUNDOWN,SPANGLISH, DESPICABLE ME 1 & 1, MINIONS,.
You can see a complete list of his film credits at his website. Born to a family of musicians in the south of Brazil, Heitor completed his conservatory studies in guitar, harmony, counterpoint and composition in Rio De Janeiro. He quickly began playing with some of the leading artists in Brazil, and attracted the attention of the producer of SIMPLY RED.
He entertained millions of fans around the world as that bands lead guitarist. He has also released three solo albums of his own music. Throughout his career, Heitor has played guitar on the albums of widely diverse artists who esteem him as much for his unique sensibility as his astonishing guitar virtuosity. These artists include: SERGIO MENDES, CAETANO VELOSO, IVAN LINS, JACK JOHNSON, BRYAN ADAMS, ELTON JOHN, WILLIE NELSON, SHANIA TWAIN, SEAL, NELLY FURTADO.
Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan has been playing the Ztar for many years now, both in live performance and on his recordings. He has two of our earliest instruments. There have been many improvements and enhancements since those Ztars were built, in particular regarding the fingerboard. Still, he’s an amazing and gifted musician, and he can play the hell out of the Ztar! If you ever have a chance to see him in concert, don’t miss it.
Pendulum
Pendulum formed in their home-town of Perth (Western Australia) in 2002, when producers Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen teamed up with acclaimed local DJ Paul Elhornet Harding. While their individual formative roots ranged from producing drum & bass, breakbeat and hardcore, to playing in metal and punk bands, their comparable talents proved an unstoppable force when they managed to single-handedly conquer the world of drum & bass in their first 12 months together.
After selling more than 100,000 units of their debut artist album ‘Hold Your Colour’, remixing for such respected artists as The Prodigy, being play-listed and featuring regularly on BBC Radio 1, all whilst continuing to tour the world over as DJs Pendulum decided that was finally time to take things to the next level performing live.
Vernon Reid
Reid was born in London, England but grew up in New York City, USA.
In 1985, Reid co-founded the Black Rock Coalition with journalist Greg Tate and producer Konda Mason. Through the BRC, Reid hoped to counter the pigeonholing and marginalization of black musicians.
Reid is probably best known for leading Living Colour. He founded Living Colour in New York City circa 1985 and piloted the band through a successful career. Among the highlights: a double platinum-selling debut album Vivid, released in 1988; its gold-certified successor, Time’s Up, released 1990; two consecutive Grammy Awards in the category of Best Hard Rock Performance; opening for the Rolling Stones 1989 ‘Steel Wheels’ tour; and appearing on the first Lollapalooza tour in the summer of 1991. Living Colour released Collideoscope in October of 2003 on Sanctuary Records.
The Chemical Brothers
The Chemical Brothers are the UK-based Grammy Award winning electronic music and rave duo of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons (occasionally referred to as Chemical Tom and Chemical Ed).
Initially they called themselves “The Dust Brothers”, after the noted United States production duo of the same name, but their burgeoning popularity and the threat of legal action from the originals led them to change their name in 1995. Along with The Prodigy, Fatboy Slim and The Crystal Method, as well as other lesser-known acts they were pioneers of the big beat electronic dance genre, and are known for high-quality live sets.
Michael Bianco
For over 20 years Michael Bianco has been pushing the boundaries of two-handed tapping style playing.
Fabrizio Chiruzzi
Italian rock guitarist Fabrizio Chiruzzi, started his career in 1995 under the influences of neoclassical metal music. At the end of 1998 he started to record three videos for a personal project called ” The Dominance Factor “, those same videos where choosen for an international italian competition promoted by Hard Rock magazine and broght him on stage with Steve Vai during The Ultra Zone World Tour in Milan in 2001. In the same year he released the first EP called Gates of Doom, with which he obtained good responses by media and new collaborations with world wide famous guitarists as well as a column in the music megazine Basimedia.
In the last years his interest for two handed tapping and composing became more and more evident, he was able to open his own recording studio for producing high quality music and to experiment the high potentiality of the Ztar instrument. Searching the net for a guitar midi controller, he discovered the Starr Labs and the most amazing instrument ever seen the Ztar. The way to approach to this instrument changed his way to compose and produce music. This, influenced also the way to play an electric guitar. The no tracking system used on the Ztar had great consequences for his shred approach, being able to play fast in both instruments without any compromise. The infinite possibilities of a Ztar with an Akai S6000 and Z4 or Yamaha Motif Rack Es became real during the record of the new release called Awakening. That’s probably the best Midi controller for guitar players of the third millennium.
Christopher Currell
Chistopher Currell has composed, performed and orchestrated music for a wide range of venues and styles including classical, jazz, avant-garde, pop, and rock. He currently owns a high tech audio production company called Audio Cybernetics.
He has over twelve year of experience with the Synclavier Digital Audio System and has worked on a wide variety of projects from pop albums to film scores to video games. He is in the pioneering field of guitar synthesis. Chistopher has performed guitar synthesis for Michael Jackson’s “BAD” award winning album and has appeared with Jackson promoting the album on Jackson’s “BAD” world tour.
Les Fradkin
MIDI Guitarist Les Fradkin is a successful songwriter/composer from the 1970’s, virtuoso guitarist and one of the original members of the hit Broadway show “Beatlemania”. He was a Guitar Synthesizer pioneer of the 1980’s, a neoclassical guitar trendsetter in the 1990’s and is now a 21st Century innovator with the Starr Labs Ztar. A classically trained musician as well as being a rock guitarist, he has found success as a recording artist, composer and producer with MGM Sunflower, ESP-Disk, Bell, Arista, RCA, and Laurie Records. Les has written the well known French hit “La Chansons Des Souvenirs” (“Song Of A Thousand Voices”) for the famous French songstress Mireille Mathieu and the Latin Pop icon Roberto Jordan (“Donde”). He has played Mellotron, 12 and 6-string Guitar, Bass and Piano on dozens of Top 40 hit records throughout the early 1970’s , scoring many US and UK chart placings throughout his career. His current music is a mixture of various influences and signposts including Progressive Rock, Electronic, Ambient, Guitar Instrumental and Classical. He has recorded several albums for the Ztar including “One Link Between Them” and “Baroque Rocks!”
Jimmy Olander
Jimmy Olander of Diamond Rio is an estalished musician of the Electric Guitar and Acoustic Guitar.
When Jimmy was 12 years old, his father took him to see a musician named Gene Johnson, who played the mandolin, in a small club near Detroit, MI. Gene became one of Jimmy’s bluegrass hero’s and later on his partner in the group Diamond Rio.
Jimmy was born in Minneapolis, MN on August 26 and when he was a teenager he had already mastered the banjo and gave lessons, however, by the time he was in college in Nashville, he found out that guitar players were more in demand than banjo pickers, so he mastered the guitar.
Jimmy joined the Tennessee River Boys in 1984 at Opryland theme park alongside Marty and Dan. His musical influences are Earl Scruggs, Leon Rhodes and Clarence White and one of his all time favorite singers is Ella Fitzgerald.
Lou Reed
Composer, Lyricist, Lead Vocals, Guitar: Lou Reed was inducted in 1996 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of The Velvet Underground and received the Heroes award from the New York Chapter of NARAS in 1997. The same year the French government awarded Reed with the Chevalier Commander of Arts and Letters. Reed has acted in and composed music for a number of films. He was designated an ‘American Master’ in 1998 by the award-winning PBS documentary series and that same year, Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart won the Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video. Lou has incorporated the zTar into his music and live show since 2003 and in 2004 performed on the Letterman show and in Carnegie Hall with two zTars on stage.
Pass Thru Fire, a collection of his lyrics, was published in 1999 by Hyperion and in 2008 by Da Capo Press. His reworking of Poe’s THE RAVEN was published by Grove Press and staged by Robert Wilson at the Thalia Theater and BAM. In recent years, Lou Reed has established himself as a world class photographer; his first photography edition Emotion In Action, a double book edition of Reed’s photographs was published in October 2003 by 7L and Gerhard Steidl. In January of 2006, Reed followed up the success of Emotion in Action with a second photography book, published by Steidl and 7L, titled Lou Reed’s New York. Photographs from this collection have been exhibited worldwide. In December of 2006 Lou Reed premiered the live staging of his masterwork Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York. It was filmed by Julian Schnabel and will be released to theaters in Spring 2008.
Shane Sanders
Sanders is a composer and visual artist living in Nashville, Tennessee. He often works in abstractions that spiral between danger and dream states with a heavy emphasis on texture.
“Lepidoptera” is his latest full length album. It is a dynamic set of works that build upon the experimental territory explored in his previous albums.
He also creates down-tempo and rock/pop influenced works. Usually there is a distinct world-culture influence on all of these styles.
Additionally, he is the owner of Sample Squad, a small commercial venture that offers unique sample sets for percussionists and composers.
McRorie Tait
McRorie-Live Electronic is the name of Stuart McRorie Tait’s live solo musical performance.
McRorie uses electronic synths and innovative sensor technology that enable him to play, sing, and perform live an eclectic variety of musical styles and originals in real-time. No sequencers, nothing pre-recorded, LIVE music!
McRorie wears eight piezo sensors on his shoes,four transducers onhis shirt, two G sensors under his armbands, two MIDI Starr Labs ZB6 controllers on his hips, two tilt sensors on his shoulders, and sings lead vocals, harmonies, and solo instruments with his voice.