The World Casio Quartet was a group I formed in 1987 that played around NYC(and elsewhere)fairly often till somewhere around 1991. It was my first attempt at formalizing the performative aspect of my microtonal composing. Originally I had been creating pieces on a Casio and then handing them to the players in my ensemble, the Flatland Oscillators to interpret. At a certain point, though, I wanted to hear the pieces played as precisely as they were when I created them. Since so many people were buying these synths, it was easy enough to find people to join me—I didn’t need to look any further than to the members of my ensemble. The classic lineup was Brian Charles, Esther Sandrof, Kevin Sparke and myself (as seen in these videos), but an earlier version included Robin Brower and a later one, Elaine Kaplinsky. In all cases, we employed Casio CZ1000's except for Kevin who used a CZ101—the same synth in a smaller package. The synths cost $259 each in 1986 and I used to brag that we had "over a $1000 worth of equipment onstage!"
Just want to add that I didn't even know this video existed until a couple of months ago—I contacted Real Art Ways to see if they had any audio recordings from this show in their archives and this is what they found! Special thanks to them and the Hartford Public Library.