At the 2012 NAMM Show Thursday, NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Ray Kurzweil, “an American author, scientist, inventor and futurist in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments.”

Lamond also presented NAMM’s Music for Life Award to Stevie Wonder, honoring him for his “brilliant musical contributions and talent that is cherished by people all over the world.” Kurzweil noted, “Stevie and I collaborated to create the first computerized musical instrument that could realistically recreate the piano and other orchestral instruments,” leading Kurzweil to found Kurzweil Music Systems in 1982. “I have been blessed to have known two people — Ray Kurzweil and Steve Jobs,” said Wonder, and he cited the contribution of both to enriching our lives with technology.

The NAMM Show, one of the largest music products trade shows in the world, opened today at the Anaheim Convention Center, welcoming an expected crowd of 90,000 musical instrument manufacturers, retailers, associates and their invited guests from all over the world to the industry’s annual gathering. Founded in 1901, the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), is the trade association for the $18 billion global music products industry.

Video above: The story of Stevie Wonder’s technical challenge to Ray Kurzweil that ultimately motivates the inception of Kurzweil Music Systems.

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video | “Ray Kurzweil receives NAMM Lifetime Achievement Award”