Schliestett & Bliss

JIM SCHLIESTETT

Jim Schliestett studied French horn with Ralph Pyle of the LA Philharmonic as a youth, recalling as a highlight performing with orchestra Mozart's Concerto #3. He studied electronic music and composition with Gordon Mumma and David Cope while at UC Santa Cruz in the 70s, and the seeds were planted for an abiding interest in Eastern European contemporary classical music.

While in college, he picked up guitar, which he put to good use in a band called Thin Ice in the early 80s. This group recorded with rock legends Nicky Hopkins and Andy Johns, and opened for many established acts including Huey Lewis, Joan Jett, and Rick Springfield. He later turned towards electronic music, collaborating with musician and instrument designer Bob Bliss in making "Sunrise Sonata", an electroacoustic tone poem, and going solo with "Thanksgiving Prayer".

As part of Cyberlab 7 in the 90s, he became an Opcode MAX developer, leading to a tour across the US with the Future Zone of Peter Gabriel's World of Music Art & Dance (WOMAD), creation of the video controller for a Stone Temple Pilots tour, an installation at the Digital Arts Be-In in San Francisco, and the writing of the time quantization routine for an interactive dance-triggered audiovisual experience now known as SpaceHarp.

After a move to New England for a job in software development, and a long hiatus for marriage and family, he began recording again in '09 with computer scientist Dean Rubine as $ense, and- in addition to the usual electric French horn and guitar- eventually discovered a passion for fretless bass. Among $ense's many utterances, math geeks in particular may appreciate their song "Easy as Pi".

BOB BLISS

Bob Bliss is a musician, software engineer, and instrument designer residing near Santa Cruz, CA. Born in Michigan, he was playing guitar in his first band at age 10, and bass guitar and keyboards soon after. He studied the French horn and composition in middle and high schools, and by age 16 was building electronic music synthesizers in his basement. Interleaving college and music, he played bass in two college jazz bands, and by 18 he was playing pop, rock, and funk keyboards nightly as a professional, while still studying electronics technology, computers, piano, and music theory. After a stint playing progressive symphonic rock, he and his band mate and wife-to-be Paula relocated to California. Bob landed a gig as electronics technician at the first music store he walked into in Santa Cruz, where he would later meet Jim Schliestett, soon to be friend and musical collaborator.

After a few years of gigging the Santa Cruz music scene in the eighties, Bob began his long engineering career at E-MU Systems. As a principal software engineer at E-MU, he wrote the operating system, realtime synthesizer, and signal processing code for the Emulator IV series of digital samplers, an instrument used by such music professionals as Tony Banks (Genesis), Trevor Rabin (Yes), and film composers Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman. Bob played electric guitar and keyboards on hundreds of pop and rock dates in the nineties, occasionally behind such notables as the Drifters, and Peter Noone (Herman's Hermits). Continuing into the new century, he has played with former members of the Doobie Brothers, Snail, and Little River Band, at times in front of the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra, and has recently recorded a CD of original eclectic folk-rock with Paula. His current day gig is Software Architect and partner at Rossum Electro-Music, LLC, purveyors of fine synthesizers.

With 2017 marking the 30-year anniversary of the creation of "Sunrise Sonata", Jim and Bob are turning their attentions to their creative futures, and are thrilled to be joining the PARMA musical community as Schliestett & Bliss.