//TEAM /THE_PEOPLE /v1.0_FIRST_SIGNAL

The People

The people building NAESE — and the community voices helping shape Year 1.

Founder's Story

//001

I grew up in Canton, Ohio, playing piano by ear before I could read read chords. By my teens I was composing and performing across Northeast Ohio, and Cleveland was the first city that ever truly felt like a stage. I eventually ended up in New York City, built a career in tech, and kept making music the entire time. But Northeast Ohio never stopped being where I came from.

I've been part of the electronic music and sound community for most of my life, as a performer, a producer, a listener, and someone who genuinely loves the gear. I've attended the expos and the festivals. I've wandered the vendor floors and watched the performances. And I kept noticing the same thing: the people who build the instruments and the people who play them were rarely in the same space, even though they may have been in the same rooms. The gear shows felt like trade floors. The music events had no space for the makers. And the incredible, giving communities that connect online, sharing patches, trading techniques, helping strangers debug their rigs at midnight, had no gathering that felt like it was built for them.

Greg Kefalas and Mike Weakley
// Mike Weakley & Greg Kefalas

I wasn't the only one who saw it. My co-founder Mike Weakley of Hive Mind Synthesis has deep roots in the synth community as a builder, performer, and advocate. When we started talking about what an event like this could be, the conversation didn't take long. We both knew what was missing, and we both knew what it should feel like: not a trade show with stage areas bolted on, not a festival with a vendor hall as an afterthought, but a single event where the people who create electronic sound, whether they solder it, code it, or perform it, can be together and experience what each other does, and be the better for it.

And it's happening in Cleveland. Not by accident, but because this is where it all started for me, and because this city deserves to be part of the story the electronic sound community is telling.

We built NAESE to be the event we always wanted to attend. We hope you'll join us.

Greg Kefalas signature

Leadership

//002
Greg Kefalas

Greg Kefalas

Founder / Executive Producer & Technology Lead

Greg Kefalas grew up in Canton, Ohio (south of Cleveland), where he taught himself piano by ear and spent years performing across Northeast Ohio before moving to New York City. That history is part of why NAESE is coming home to Cleveland.

His career bridges the two worlds NAESE is built to connect. A web designers & developer since 1996 and former co-founder/CTO for appliedSB and later VL Group, he personally built the AudioBank/Rhymba music API, powering digital music delivery & streaming for clients including Live Nation, IMVU, DMX/SonicTap, MusicToday fan portals, and whitelabel stores for Billboard/Delta, Pepsi, McDonald's, and more. He went on to found Mattermind, a consulting and development agency, and built Phosis, a proprietary CMS platform serving over 1.3 million requests per month (including this website!) and various clients' platforms.

He performs, improvises, and produces various electronic music genres, and streams live improvised sessions on Twitch, as Luquado. He plays piano-rock under his own name, and he co-founded the New York Holiday Singers, where he serves as Music and Tech Director. And, NAESE's website, vendor portal, and registration infrastructure? He built those, too.

// luquado.com // Instagram
Mike Weakley

Mike Weakley

Co-Founder / Vendor Outreach & Community Lead

Raised on the synthesizer sounds of classic rock, Mike got his first keyboard (a Casio SK-1) at the age of 7 and was instantly hooked into the electronic sound. As a teenager (and since), they've learned electronics by pulling half-broken pieces from dumpsters and thrift stores in an attempt to rescue them from eternity as landfill.

Over the years they created circuit-bending house "Bendmonger Instruments", which eventually became Hive Mind Synthesis — a retail shop and digital community for small makers (and synth maker in its own right). He also directs the MEGA Modular Corporation (a cooperative who's-who of synth designers) and regularly speaks about the benefits of live streaming for musicians, teaches the basics of synthesis to students of all ages, and performs and records electronic music as The Killer Bee Relay Team and half of Thicc Wiccans.

// hivemindsynthesis.com // megamodular.co

Advisory Committee

//003

Trusted ears from the music-tech community. They visit, react, push back, vouch — an early audience for Year 1 ideas before they reach the floor.

Andrew Lent

Andrew Lent

Musician, producer, and co-owner of record label Ix Studios. Lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

// ixstudios.net
David Sperling

David Sperling

Software engineer and multi-instrumentalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As 302_Dave, he live streams improvised live-looped house, trance, and — as he describes it — "other nonsense."

// davidsperling.com
Julian Berke

Julian Berke

Keyboardist, synth player, singer, composer, bandleader, multidisciplinary writer and editor based in Chicago. Makes post-punk industrial-funk dark-electro dub-techno art-garage music as Malice Coltrane.

// YouTube

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