New York - GRAMMY Professional Development Series: “In the Studio –The Art of the Craft” #3
GRAMMY Professional Development Series: In the Studio – The Art of the Craft
On Wednesday, March 16th, New York’s beautiful American Academy of Arts & Letters http://www.artsandletters.org hosted the 3rd installment of this series of events presented in actual recording studios. This event featured 10-time GRAMMY winning classical producer David Frost and two-time GRAMMY winning classical engineer Tim Martyn together with the American String Quartet’s Daniel Avshalomov (viola), Laurie Carney (violin), Wolfram Koessel (cello) and Peter Winograd (violin); internationally recognized as one of the world’s foremost quartets.
The evening began with Scott Jacoby, New York Chapter Board Member and P&E Wing Committee Co-Chair, who thanked the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He then introduced David Frost, who introduced Tim and the quartet.
The popularized recording “Adagio for Strings Op. 11” composed by Samuel Barber, has been played at funerals (Albert Einstein and Princess Grace of Monaco,) can be heard on many films (Platoon, Elephant Man, Amélie, Swimming Upstream, and others), television (“The Simpsons”, “South Park”, “Seinfeld”, “How I Met Your Mother”, “Big Love”, and others) and video game soundtracks (“Homeworld”). The work is extremely popular in the electronic dance music genre – most notably in trance – covered by artists Armin Van Buuren, William Orbit, Ferry Corsten and Tiësto.
David and Tim talked about how the goal for recording a quartet, is that each instrument needs to be musically balanced, with an equal presence; while using 2 omni microphones. They spoke about the acoustics of the auditorium, the microphones, pre-amps, digital and MADI converters and the fiber optic cables used to enable the 64 track system.
During the presentation/session, the guests were encouraged to sit on the stage or in the control room while the recording session took place, giving everyone a true up close and personal experience. This then led to an intimate one-on-one Q&A for all attendees. The event concluded with a networking session.
In the near future, we will be announcing more events as we continue this series, but in the meantime, for those New York Chapter members located in the New England area, we hope to see you on March 30th at M Works http://www.m-works.com/ in Cambridge, MA with owner Jonathan Wyner and Q Division producer Mike Denneen.