NEW YORK, May 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BandM8, the innovative music-to-music technology creation platform that plays with you, not for you, today announced the appointment of Serge Belongie and Vernon Reid as the first members of its Advisory Board. The announcement was made by BandM8 CEO and Co-Founder Bob Pfeifer.
The formation of the advisory board marks a significant milestone for BandM8 as it expands its leadership network across both advanced technology and world-class musicianship.
“Serge and Vernon reflect exactly what BandM8 stands for—deep technology and real musicianship,” said Pfeifer. “Their expertise and industry knowledge will help us to continue to expand the platform and be an ethical, creative music technology that creates alongside artists. Both have been working with us since we were an idea – I’m happy to formalize them as our first Advisory Board members.”
Belongie brings deep expertise in building intelligent, scalable systems at the intersection of creativity and engineering. His experience will help guide BandM8’s continued development of its proprietary real-time music engine and its evolving Music Creation Platform (MCP).
“The music technology and generative space is moving quickly — and not always with an eye toward ethical creativity. BandM8 is built to support both the function and the mission of the creative process,” said Belongie. “BandM8 represents a new form of technology-mediated, artist-driven creative expression.”
Reid, GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist and founding member of Living Colour and the Black Rock Coalition, joins BandM8 with a legacy of musical innovation and boundary-pushing artistry. Known for blending genres and embracing new technologies, Reid’s perspective reinforces BandM8’s mission to empower musicians through creative collaboration. He has performed with hundreds of artists from Mick Jagger to Public Enemy to B.B. King to Mariah Carey to The Roots, and collaborated with numerous creators, including choreographer Bill T. Jones.
“BandM8 represents a fundamental shift in how music is created,” said Reid. “It is meant for musicians to use as an extension of the ideas that they’re expressing. Not a tool to take away the human experience of creating music. This is more like playing with an intelligent, responsive bandmate.”
BandM8 is built by musicians and technologists to close the gap between inspiration and execution. The platform listens to what a user plays—guitar, keys, vocals, or other instruments—and instantly generates full-band accompaniment that follows timing, feel, and musical intent.
Unlike prompt-based AI tools, BandM8 is a real-time, MIDI-driven system available as a free web program and a DAW plugin for systems such as Logic and Ableton. It enables musicians to write faster, practice smarter, record anywhere, and explore creatively.
The Advisory Board will expand in the coming months to include additional leaders across music, technology, and creative industries.
About Serge Belongie:
He is a Denmark-based technologist and computer vision leader, is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, where he also serves as the head of the Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence (P1). Previously, he was a professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, an Associate Dean at Cornell Tech, a member of Google’s Visiting Faculty program, and a professor of Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. His research interests include Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, and Human-in-the-Loop Computing. He is also a co-founder of several companies, including Digital Persona and Anchovi Labs. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the MIT Technology Review “Innovators Under 35” Award, the Stibitz-Wilson Award, the Helmholtz Prize, the Everingham Prize, and the Koenderink Prize for fundamental contributions to the Computer Vision community. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and serves as President of the board of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS).
About Vernon Reid:
Vernon Reid is a GRAMMY Award-winning guitarist, composer, producer, and cultural innovator best known as the founding guitarist of the groundbreaking rock band Living Colour, whose landmark album Vivid helped redefine rock music in the late 1980s. A two-time Grammy winner and co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition, Reid is celebrated for his fearless fusion of rock, funk, jazz, metal, and experimental music. His latest project, Hoodoo Telemetry (2025), continues his legacy of sonic innovation. Over his career, Reid has collaborated or performed with artists including Prince, Janet Jackson, Mick Jagger, Public Enemy, James Blood Ulmer, and John Zorn, cementing his reputation as one of music’s most visionary and influential guitarists.
About BandM8
BandM8 is a real-time music-to-music creation tool that plays with you. Built by musicians and technologists, it transforms live input into responsive, full-band accompaniment using a proprietary engine and conversational music interface (MCP). Designed to support artists—not replace them—BandM8 enables a new era of collaborative, human-centered music creation.
Contact:
Hanna Bolte, Bolte Media for BandM8
[email protected]
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