1952: Born on December 17th. Nationality: Dutch

1963-64: Bought his first guitar, against his father's wishes, and taught himself playing it. Organized a school band. Became more and more fascinated with keyed instruments and consequently took classical piano lessons.

1965: Played guitar, bass, and piano in little bands.

Since 1966: Involved in countless productions of the Netherlands' best studio. Accompanied the Beach Boys on the Hammond organ, also played keyboard for David Bowie.

“Studio & Academy Period”
approx. 1966-1980

1970: Formed the Pop/Jazz Rock group “Gamma”, composed the music, and played the synthesizer (an AKS).

1972: Recorded his first LP.

70s: Favored music over chemistry as a career. Went to the Academy of Music in The Hague (Netherlands) and was educated as a classical concert pianist. Spent ten hours a day in order to get through his exams as quickly as possible. At the same time worked in several studios (e.g. as a recording engineer with the M.C.R. Studio starting in 1975) and taught composition and keyboard at the Hilversumse Muziekschool. Graduated from the Academy in 1976 and finally gave his own Academy lectures.

1981: Released his first synthesizer album named “Cristallin”, mostly inspired by Maurice Ravel. His other sources of inspiration include Mozart, Bach, and Scriabin as well as Isao Tomita and Wendy Carlos.

“Cristallin Period”
approx. 1981-1988

1982: "Cristallin" received high praise in the April issue of the U.S. Keyboard magazine (details).

1983: Bought an expensive Fairlight CMI-2, which caused a new world to open up for him. Composed the “Big Brother Suite”, inspired by Orwell's book “1984”.

80s: Started his own Star Inc. studio (1982) and label (1986), which he released more than 100 CDs from. Located in Huizen and later in Bennekom (both Netherlands) until 1998. He bought and used a Synclavier 3200, a Roland Jupiter 8, a Minimoog, a Yamaha CS 60/CS 30, and many more synthesizers. Installed an SSL G-series computerized mixing desk.
Produced several Demis Roussos and Nancy Boyd albums, and his two “A Close Call” albums together with Bert van Breda between 1983 and 1995. Was involved in countless music productions from the late 70s until the mid 80s, especially as programmer for the Fairlight synthesizer system.

1989: Started a collaboration with Arcade Group Inc., which resulted in the release of about 30 albums, most prominently the widely recognized “Synthesizer Greatest” and “Synthétiseur” series, locally adapted for various European markets.

“Arcade Period”
approx. 1989-1996

1991: Remixed his older analog recordings in his new digitial studio for the "Retrospection" album.

1996: Released the final Arcade CD (“Synthétiseur 12”).

1996: Began a rather recreational 5-year period.

1998: Released a series of three CDs named “The Surround Experience” with many of his former works re-mixed in Dolby Surround. Moved with his studio to southern France.

2000: Finally was honored with an Internet fan page, run by Stefan Fleischmann and Andreas Heinz (Germany).

2001: Plans to concentrate solely on further compositions of his own, as a kind of revival of his Cristallin days. Currently works on four separate projects, which are supposed to take about 3 years to complete.

2002: Changed his former plans into an epic project about the universe.

2003: Started to research and compose for his epical 'Universe' project.

2004: Upgraded his studio setup from Dolby Surround to Dolby Digital 5.1. Began in autumn to record the first tracks of his new project.

2005: Changed his studio setup by using software synthesizers and other plug-ins for Logic Pro 7 only.

2006: Finished the pre-recordings of all themes/cells (500+) for his epical project and began to refine these basic recordings into completely orchestrated pieces, a process that he says will take about 3-5 years from now. Composed about 1'200 additional themes/cells for his project this autumn.

Our sources of information were the CD/LP booklets of “Synthesizer Spectacular”, “Retrospection”, “Syndrome”, “Synthesizer Greatest”, and - most notably - Ed Starink himself (read also the interview).