Composer Ben Neill and executive producer Carolyn Sachs have launched New York-based music/sound design house Green Beet Productions. In the past, Neill has composed music for several spots through Trillium Productions, New York—Sachs’ repping firm, where she is president as well as Neill’s manager. These included Volkswagen’s "Chase," "Turbonium," and "Passing" via Arnold Communications (now Arnold Worldwide), Boston. The latter two ads were featured in SHOOT’s "Top Spot of the Week" (7/2/99, p. 12, and 7/21/00, p. 14, respectively). His other credits include Philips Electronics’ "Concession Stand" and "Party Animal," both via Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, New York.
Neill is primarily known as an experimental composer and performer who plays the mutantrumpet, an instrument he invented. The mutantrumpet is a hybrid acoustic/electronic instrument, incorporating the body of a trumpet, three bells, two sets of valves and a trombone slide. Neill also composes electronic music.
The North Carolina native is a classically trained musician who graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 1987; he also studied composition with avant garde composer La Monte Young. As Neill told SHOOT, "I got into composing through a desire to do more accessible music—I didn’t want to just be in the classical world. I got the idea to create the mutantrumpet in the mid ’80s and started experimenting with that. I also did a lot of work with experimental electronic composers." It was in the early ’90s, however, that Neill’s career took off: "With the rise of all the new electronic music—ambient, techno—I felt I had really found the niche for my music," he explained.
Off and on from ’91 to ’94, Neill also was an artist in residence at Steim, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Amsterdam. "That was when I developed a lot of current interfaces of the mutantrumpet," he pointed out, adding, "in terms of all of the work I’m doing with electronics now, I’m completely self taught." Between’92 and ’98, he was music curator at New York performance space The Kitchen; and he has released the CDs Green Machines (’95), on the Astralwerks label, and Triptycal (’96) and Goldbug (’98), on Antilles, a division of PolyGram.
Neill first started creating music for advertising about a year and a half ago, when Lance Jensen, then executive VP/creative director at Arnold Communications (now Arnold Worldwide), Boston, contacted the composer and asked him if he’d be interested in working for Arnold client Volkswagen. This was the beginning of a relationship that has since resulted in 11 Volkswagen spots, and in several others—"Spain," "Egypt," "New Zealand" and "Las Vegas"—for The Travel Channel, which Neill (as Green Beet) composed via Boston-based Modernista!, the agency that president/creative director Jensen, with CEO/creative director Gary Koepke, opened last year. Neill offered, "The whole concept of the mutantrumpet is the [meeting of the] human and the electronic—a kind of cyborg idea. The electronic valves and switches on the mutantrumpet make it like a sophisticated keyboard controller. The idea was always to create a real synthesis between the human and the electronic elements."
Neill and Sachs first met about five years ago, when The Kitchen produced several concerts featuring modern musician/composer Glenn Branca. In addition to managing artists’ careers, Sachs, through Trillium, produces concerts, so she was also working on those at The Kitchen. When Neill signed a record deal with PolyGram in ’96, he asked Sachs to rep him. Sachs has an MBA, as well as an MA in composition, both from Columbia University, New York. She opened Trillium in ’89.
While Neill has used the mutantrumpet in advertising, currently "a lot of the focus is on working on the computer and electronic sampling" instead. While of late his non-advertising work has tended towards dance-oriented electronic music, Neill is comfortable working in a variety of styles: "I have a broad background, and that flexibility comes in handy when working in advertising." Nor is there a wide rift between the assignments he does for agencies and the work he does on his own: "Most of the stuff I’ve been doing [in advertising] has been related to the music I’ve been doing artistically." Green Beet is just now beginning to actively pursue advertising clients. "We’re always trying to broaden our focus," he explained.
In addition to several other musical projects, Neill is currently collaborating with Scottish musician Andrew Montgomery on several songs; the pair has also just completed a version of Peter Gabriel’s "Shock the Monkey," for a Gabriel tribute album to be released in June.
