Back to the Future

Malcolm Cecil inside TONTO, the world’s largest analog synthesizer.

Standing in front of his Saugerties home in a pair of pristine white overalls and waving frantically at your lost music editor, Malcolm Cecil looks like some kind of mad lab technician. In fact, with his thick, curly hair—also a pure shade of white—he looks like an older version of another Englishman with a cult following: TV’s Doctor Who.

Cecil (“In England it’s pronounced ‘Sess-il,’ but I’m an American now so I’ll also answer to ‘See-sil’”) leads the way inside and through the red shag-carpeted living room, a sunny space lined with bulging bookcases and populated with statuettes of Buddah and Hindu deities, Tibetan bells and singing bowls, and a formidable, wall-hanging collection of ceremonial swords and daggers. Then it’s out the back door and past the shed that houses his artist-wife Poli Cecil’s workspace, which is filled with her brightly hued paintings and sculptures. Finally, the spry 70-year-old is standing at the door of his personal studio, a converted barn with a newly sided exterior and a tall-pitched roof. He turns the key, enters, and flicks a light switch.

In one corner of the enormous room is a dark overstuffed sofa, the walls behind it dotted with framed gold records and certificates; a lone shelf holds a Grammy Award. Bookending the couch are two of the musician-producer’s upright basses and taking up the remainder of this half of the chamber are some older tape decks and the usual modern, computer-assisted gear. But dominating the far end of the sanctum is something else—a series of large, gracefully curving wooden cabinets linked closely to form a semicircle. Cecil steps behind the edifice, the clicking of another switch is heard, and the massive machine comes to life. With its loosely hanging patch cords and dozens of randomly blinking lights, the futuristic structure looks like something Lt. Uhuru, rather than Cecil, should be sitting in front of. With his fingers on one of the contraption’s several keyboard units, he starts to play, and a deeply funky, soul-saturated motif fills the room and rattles the floor. The sound is unmistakable, and it should be: This is TONTO (an acronym for The Original New Timbral Orchestra), which, at a height of five feet and occupying 300 square feet, is the world’s largest analog synthesizer and the very one played by Stevie Wonder on such hits as “Living for the City,” “Higher Ground,” and “Superstition.” Cecil began its ongoing construction in 1968 with fellow engineer-producer Bob Margouleff.