Don Lewis was a pioneering musician and Pleasanton resident who, among other accomplishments, invented the Live Electronic Orchestra – an integrated sound controller for analog synthesizers. Looking like the captain’s console on a spaceship, the LEO allowed him to play many different electronic instruments at once, anticipating what MIDI tech would do a full decade later.
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When Lewis died in 2022, his adopted hometown got to work on a suitably groovy tribute, which went up this June in Delucchi Park. It’s a sonic artwork called the “Don Lewis Harmonic Symphony,” incorporating a 600-pound abstract sculpture plus six musical instruments that depend on public participation to emit sounds – a harp, metallophone, pagoda bells, lilypad cymbals and contrabass and manta-ray chimes.
Now the presence of the former collaborator of Quincy Jones and Marvin Hamlisch is around for perpetuity, waiting to be musically tickled by anyone strolling past. “Unlike other artwork, this artwork is incomplete without human interaction. It is sonic, kinetic art — alive and celebratory,” says Jan Coleman-Knight of the Pleasanton Cultural Arts Council.
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She adds: “It is fitting that a work dedicated to his memory encourages experimentation, creativity, and human connection.”
Details: Open daily at the Musical Art Plaza in Delucchi Park, 4501 First St., Pleasanton; pleasantonarts.org/play-the-art
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