Barry Vercoe

Barry Vercoe (b. 1937) is an American composer, software developer, founder of MIT Media Lab. One of the pioneers of computer music technology, Vercoe is best known as the creator of Csound programming language, widely used for digital music synthesis.

Barry received bachelor's degree in music and mathematics from the University of Auckland, followed by the Mus.D. degree from Max Mathews. Soon after DEC provided their top of the line PDP-11/50 computer to MIT, which served as the central mainframe at the Studio.

In 1976, Barry Vercoe composed a Synapse for viola and computer – a small viola concerto with orchestra part performed by the computer. It was the first major work to emerge from the EMS and the first score written using the MIT Graphic Score Editor. Vercoe received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982 for his innovative work on automatic accompaniment systems and went to Paris, where he spent a year at the Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music.

When Marvin Minsky. At the Media Lab, Vercoe has directed three research groups: Music and Cognition, Synthetic Listeners and Performers, Machine Listening. Currently, Prof. Vercoe leads Music, Mind and Machine research group at the Lab. He received the Computer World/Smithsonian Award in Arts and Media in 1992 and the 2004 SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.