Eran Egozy, co-founder and chief technical officer of Harmonix Music Systems and a developer of the Rock Band video game, will speak 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, in the Student Life Center. The talk will address creativity, the business of video games and the cultural influence of interactive music-inspired games.

The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a Rock Band competition that is open to students, faculty and staff as participants. The Rock Band competition will be held at 8 p.m. in the Student Life Center Ballroom. The competition will benefit the W.O. Smith Nashville Community Music School, which provides music lessons to children from low-income families.

“We are honored to have Eran as our 2009 Curb Creative Leadership speaker,” said Steven J. Tepper, associate director of the Curb Center. “The series is intended to bring to Vanderbilt entrepreneurs and cultural leaders, like Eran, whose work and vision have transformed the way we experience art and media.”

The Curb Creative Leadership Series offers students and the community the opportunity to engage in intimate, informal conversations around contemporary issues related to creativity, culture, expressive life, leadership, enterprise and the public interest. The series is part of the Creative Campus initiative at Vanderbilt, which aims to make creative engagement and expression a core aspect of campus experience.

As the co-founder and chief technical officer of Harmonix Music Systems, Egozy has built one of the leading game development studios in the world. Harmonix Music Systems has developed over a dozen critically acclaimed music-based video games, including Rock Band. Egozy was listed in Time magazine’s 2008 list of the most influential people for his work on Rock Band.

For more information about Vanderbilt’s Creative Campus and the Curb Creative Leadership Series, http://www.vanderbiltcreativecampus.org/.

For more information about Egozy and Harmonix, visit http://www.harmonixmusic.com/.

For more information about the public lecture and the Rock Band competition, visit www.rockbandvandy.com.

Contact: Jacob Weiss, (615) 322-2872
jacob.weiss@vanderbilt.edu

This lecture is part of the Curb Creative Leadership Series.