Moog has never been so en vogue.

Story by Jess McCuan . Photographed by Stewart O’Shields at the Lexington Avenue Brewery in downtown Asheville.

It’s pronounced Moog. Like vogue. And every time someone says Moog with a long “oo”—as in the words blue or fruit—they should donate $1 to the Bob Moog Foundation. That would certainly make Bob Moog’s daughter, Michelle Moog-Koussa, happy. And her foundation would get a whopper of a cash infusion. Later this month, whether people mispronounce Moog or not, she’ll be getting a financial boost from Moogfest, which is shaping up to be one of the buzziest Asheville music events of the year.

For three days at the end of October, Asheville will be transformed into a mecca for all things Moog. Knoxville, Tennessee-based A.C. Entertainment, Moog Music and The Bob Moog Foundation have teamed up for Asheville’s very first Moogfest, a celebration of electronic music that was for years held in New York City. The festival took a break in 2009 to re-tool, and now, in Asheville, it’s become a multi-day, multi-venue extravaganza (think Bonnaroo for electronic music). Except that Moogfest’s musical lineup goes well beyond electronica. Rappers like Big Boi from Outkast will perform, along with soul-pop crooner Cee Lo Green, the trip-hop stars Massive Attack and the quirky ‘80s punk heroes Devo. Then there are truly eclectic and global additions, like the Brooklyn pop band MGMT, the Philadelphia jam-band Disco Biscuits and the London dubstep DJ Sara Abdel-Hamid, also known as Ikonika. There’s no single element that unites all 50 acts, says Ashley Capps, A.C. Entertainment’s founder and president. Many use Moog instruments, but some don’t. He and his team, who also produce Bonnaroo, were simply looking for pioneering musicians, acts that represented “the nowness of Bob Moog” and his innovative approach to making music.

So far, all original $150 weekend passes to the festival are sold out, and at presstime, the company had released a new batch of $185 passes. Ticket sales will be limited to 8,000 each day of the fest, and in all, Capps expects some 30,000 people to attend. $1 of each ticket sale goes to the Bob Moog Foundation, as will the proceeds from some events.

And what makes now the right time for such a big Moog bash? Capps believes there’s a resurgence of interest recently in Bob Moog, who died in 2005 from a brain tumor. “He changed the sound of music and the tools with which music was made,” Capps says. “There’s a re-focusing on electronic instruments and a re-appreciation of Bob.”

Moog-Koussa is thrilled to see so many artists and enthusiasts uniting in Asheville under the Moog banner. Her father, a native New Yorker, was arguably one of Asheville’s most famous citizens after he and his family moved here in 1978. Moog didn’t invent the synthesizer, but he was the first to make synthesizers widely available, and most modern musicians who make any form of electronic music are familiar with Moog’s inventions. Take the Minimoog, a small analog synthesizer that was first rolled out in 1970. Its robust sound makes it popular with rock bands, and some 12,000 of the originals are still in circulation today.

Moog and his family lived in Leicester until 1994, when Moog and his first wife, Shirleigh May, divorced. He later married UNC-Asheville philosophy professor Ileana Grams-Moog, and the couple lived together until his death in 2005. At the time, Moog-Koussa, who has two children, Gregory and Jasmin, was running the Amoré gift gallery on Lexington Avenue in downtown Asheville. At first, she was reluctant to take on the job of running the Bob Moog Foundation full time, but by 2007, she became its executive director and its only paid employee. She seems particularly detached about working full time to preserve her father’s legacy. Trying to understand Moog’s contribution to music is simply a different activity than reflecting on her father as a person. “Bob Moog and my father are two separate people,” she says.

Not long before she became executive director in 2007, Moog-Koussa and her family members unearthed stacks and stacks of Bob Moog’s papers, plans and instruments in a moldy shed near their former Leicester home. One of the foundation’s main goals will be to sort through and preserve those objects and papers (now in climate-controlled storage). Eventually, they’ll end up in an archive in the Asheville “Moogseum.” Funding for the foundation, which also does educational demonstrations in classrooms, has dipped in the long recession. But last year it received a $600,000 grant from the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority for museum construction. Moog-Koussa says the foundation still needs some $3 million in funding to get started.

Moog-Koussa thinks Moogfest will give both the foundation and Moog Music (two separate entities) a bump in sales and interest, and she sees 2011 as a big year to get various Moog projects off the ground. “I can’t imagine something I would like to do more than this,” she says of running the foundation. “I’m often on the receiving end of all this energy that’s intended for Bob Moog. That is a sacred place to stand.”

For more details about Moogfest, which runs October 29-31, check out www.moogfest.com. For more on The Bob Moog Foundation’s work, go to www.moogfoundation.org.

Styling by Dema Badr, with clothing from Frock, Vintage Moon, Costume Shoppe and Bellagio. T-shirts courtesy of Moog Music.

Makeup by Mendy Hoffman of Makeup at The Grove Arcade.

Hair by Gretchen Pheffer for The Secret Spa.

Models: Morgan Purdy, Marlowe Payne, Grace Ellen, Lauren Scheaffer Powell.

Photography assistants: Megan Cox, Mark McDaniels, Jim Burns.

Gear and instruments courtesy of Musician’s Workshop, Moog Music and The Bob Moog Foundation.

Special thanks to Joe Culpepper at Lexington Avenue Brewery, Roslyn McIntyre and Scott Thompson of Makeup at the Grove Arcade.