Musician Powell's musical career started in the late 1960s, programming analog synthesizers for commercials. Powell was the protégé of
Robert Moog (who created the Moog synthesizer), as well as Moog's competitor
ARP, contributing designs and demonstrating systems. Powell played
keyboards and
synthesizers with the rock band
Utopia, led by
Todd Rundgren and featuring players
Kasim Sulton and
Willie Wilcox, among others, from 1974 until its disbanding in 1985, playing, writing, and singing on ten of the band's eleven albums. For Utopia's live shows, Powell created the
Powell Probe; the first remote, hand-held
polyphonic synthesizer controller, which featured a custom-made shell used to access a complex stack of
sequencers and other peripherals offstage, a device also used in a modified form by
Jan Hammer. His first solo album
Cosmic Furnace was released in 1973. It was praised by
Billboard magazine's reviewer as "...a fascinating, demanding LP that has all the hypnotic eeriness of the recent Miles Davis approach";
Village Voice critic
Robert Christgau called it "the best pop electronicism since
Terry Riley's
A Rainbow in Curved Air." Powell produced several additional solo albums, and was a touring musician with
David Bowie and others. In October 2006, after a long absence from music recording, he released
Fossil Poets with musicians
Gary Tanin and
Greg Koch. The music is described as electronic / prog rock '
retro-futuristic'. In March 2009, he released
Blue Note Ridge with producer Gary Tanin. The music is described as solo piano improvisations. He occasionally performs with
Bay Area folk musician and friend
David Elias, plus other local, roots musicians. Informal live performances have been hosted and recorded at the
San Gregorio General Store. On September 7, 2009, Powell once again shared the stage with Rundgren as part of a re-constituted Utopia, with
Tubes drummer
Prairie Prince replacing Willie Wilcox. The band played an opening set for an album-length concert of Rundgren's
A Wizard/A True Star. Powell was able to participate in the short tour after leaving
Apple Computer, where he worked as a programmer, and before starting work at Electronic Arts. In 2011, Powell made brief appearances on an album by Nashville artist Joe 'Guido Welsh' entitled
Nothing Left To Say. He played two signature Minimoog solos on the recording which also featured former Utopia members John Siegler and Kevin Ellman.
Programmer Powell developed one of the first personal computer
MIDI sequencers,
Texture. Originally written for the
Apple II,
Texture allowed the user to manipulate patterns of notes and store them on disk. Soon after the MIDI protocol was introduced, Texture was ported to the
IBM PC and the
Amiga and utilized the
Roland MPU-401 MIDI interface. Its celebrity users included
Stevie Wonder and
Bob James. Much of Powell's computer work pre-dated MIDI. He gave the
first performance on an all digital synthesizer while working with Hal Alles, Douglas Bayer, and Gregory Sims at
Bell Laboratories. Powell's talents led eventually to positions with WaveFrame (an "audio mainframe" synthesizer used by
Peter Gabriel),
Silicon Graphics and Alias/Wavefront. From 1997 to May 2009, he worked for
Apple Computer as a senior programmer and technical lead for audio within Apple Professional Applications. He currently works at
Electronic Arts as a Senior Producer on emerging music technologies.
Writer Powell wrote a
Keyboard magazine column on synthesizer technique for a number of years which were included in several books published by Hal Leonard -
Synthesizer Basics,
Synthesizer Technique and
Synthesizers and Computers ==Solo discography==