"Stevie Wonder was our first customer for the Kurzweil Reading Machine (the first print-to-speech reading machine) in 1976. We became friends and exchanged ideas for a long time about technology applied to disabilities in musical instrument practice. In 1982, while showing me around his new Wonderland music studio, Stevie asked me if it was possible to bridge the methods of MIDI recording (in which many peripherals could be used) with the majestic sounds of acoustic instruments like the piano and guitar. I thought about it and concluded that it would be feasible. Kurzweil Music Systems was born in 1982 with Stevie Wonder as a musical advisor.

We showed a prototype of the Kurzweil 250 at NAMM 1983, and people were amazed that the look and feel of a grand piano had been realistically captured in an electronic instrument for the first time. We began shipping the product in 1984, and it quickly became the first computerized instrument to faithfully capture acoustic piano sounds, which we confirmed in A-B tests with pianists.

In the following years, we developed a succession of digital keyboards that maintained this leadership in realism while offering a new range of sounds and sound modification techniques that are only possible in the electronic world. That was the vision that Stevie Wonder had articulated in 1982, and I was personally happy that he felt satisfied that we had realized it together. Many other artists (Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, The Who, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Boston Pops, Andrew Lloyd Webber to name just a few) around the world seemed to agree.

I’ve always thought that the type of technology represented by Kurzweil Music would become widely available. Years ago, only the best studios could offer technology that allowed flexible shaping of new sounds. Now, these tools can be offered to everyone, from music students to weekend musicians. As technological progress continues to accelerate at an exponential rate, Kurzweil will continue to push the limits of what is possible, further blurring the line between music and machine." – Ray Kurzweil, founder of Kurzweil Music Systems