Neil S. Kvern has been played on NTS in shows including SKYAPNEA, featured first on 9 April 2024. Songs played include Woodhenge.

Neil Kvern was a writer and self-taught experimental musician loosely affiliated with the Eugene Electronic Music Collective, though he actually lived in Seattle. This connection stemmed largely from his close friendship with EEMC members Carl Juarez and Brian Magill who helped encourage him to play music in the first place. Kvern produced a small body of work from 1983 to 1987 that has recently started to get attention from collectors.

Kvern was born in 1958 and grew up in a tiny town in Northern Idaho. He was the second of four kids and spent most of his early life outdoors. His father taught high school and his mother was a librarian and teacher. His grandmother, who lived down the road, was the organist at church and was an early music influence, helping Kvern get interested in playing the family piano.

During his teen years, Kvern got into science fiction and fantasy literature and began writing stories of his own. He went on to study English, History and Philosophy at Whitman College in Southeast Washington state. Although he didn't study music at the time, he started to absorb the adventurous sounds coming out of Europe like Gong, Magma, and Brian Eno. He also recalls being blown away by Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert.

Kvern left college and moved to Seattle in 1979 and began working a series of publishing and printing jobs. On a trip to the Bay Area with his brother, he met Carl Juarez and Brian Magill in Eugene and was introduced to the vibrant experimental music scene there. This inspired him to start playing music of his own and recording it with friends, improvising everything and then adding overdubs.

Kvern was self-taught, and his early recordings show an artistic leaning which emphasized spontaneity and freshness. Kvern used piano, recorders, guitars, saxophones, marimba--whatever he could get his hands on. Kvern followed up his debut soon after with the more ambitious, 90-minute Doctor Dancing Mask.

Kvern sold his tapes mostly through word of mouth, though Doctor Dancing Mask was reviewed in Op. For his third album, Kvern got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and produced Ancient Cities/Future Ruins. While working for the Rocket in Seattle, Kvern got to know many other musicians, though he remained closest to Carl Juarez and Brian Magill. His final release was a split cassette with Magill (who recorded under the name Phyllyp Vernacular) in 1987. After that, Kvern continued to record but never released anything else.