Audio Engineering

Audio Engineering
For a more comprehensive list of my work please see the curriculum vitae. Below is a just highlight of projects I have had the privilege of working on; there are dozens of independent recordings I have engineered not included.

Miscellaneous Labels

Below are a few albums I have participated in recording, editing, or both on internationally released albums.
Stacks Image 688382
play1

David Darling - Prayer For Compassion

Stacks Image 688411
This is ocean music for the opening heart. David Darling is one of the great souls and so astonishingly creative it takes your breath. There is such tenderness here, and majesty, and strength. Reserve and passion. Mickey Houlihan, that genius of natural sound, and David have been working on this music for years, and it is simply a magnificent gift to civilization, one that will outlast us all.

Coleman Barks

Stacks Image 688390
Stacks Image 688392
I rarely get to hear a work with such depth. That's such an overused word, I hesitate to use it here, but it truly touches me on some pretty profound levels. Other words come to mind as well-it displays an artistic maturity in David that, from a performer's point of view, we all strive for. I've read the liner notes, but I sense a deeper, more profound purpose at work here, that creative imperative that is so difficult to attain. I'm guessing that upon completion, all involved just looked at each other and said "Yes, that's it."

Transcendent-it's an elusive descriptor that I save for a special few disks, when the music transcends the instrument's vocabulary, the performer's chops, the composer's craft, the producer's skill, finding a place that can only be called pure music. It's a special thing when music can be called transcendent — Prayer for Compassion is indeed in that category. You have much to be proud of.

Michael DeLalla - Falling Mountain Music

In “Prayer for Compassion”, a ten-year journey from the deep, passionate devotion of the greatly gifted and inspirational David Darling and Mickey Houlihan, David Darling, a creative genius using the universal language of music inherent in each of us and understood by all, expresses that which cannot be said in words ... the feelings from deep in the soul of love, caring, kindness and concern for all humanity, for the suffering, for this great planet... the wondrous beauty of life, humanity, nature and all her creatures ... this Heaven on Earth ... a life given and lovingly nurtured by our blessed mothers, a life guided by deep spirituality and love ... This music and the message in it is a precious, Blessed gift for all the world to hear and be inspired to an understanding of all peoples, to peace and harmony...very heartfelt thanks, gratitude and blessings to you both.

Jacqueline Bhuyan

David Darling is the Lord of Largo, the Maestro of Melancholy. Classically trained and jazz converted, he played cello with the Paul Winter Consort in the 1970s including the landmark Icarus album. Since then, He’s released several albums on the ECM, Narada, and the Hearts of Space labels and in the process, has become a leading exponent of ambient chamber music. His new album, Prayer for Compassion, continues his mastery of melancholy.

It’s a soulful, heartrending sound that Darling gets from his cello and it has attracted people like film director Wim Wenders...
Read & Hear More
thex Created with Sketch.

Wind Over the Earth
-Grammy Award Winning Album-

Stacks Image 688294
play1

The Dave Liebman Big Band - Live As Always

Sound quality is excellent—well-balanced, clear and crisp—ensuring that all sections of the band can be heard distinctly. Such sound quality is crucial to any big band recording, even more so when the instrumentalists in every section are so finely in tune with each other...
Read More at All About Jazz
Stacks Image 688302
Stacks Image 688304
“David Liebman has the ability to touch the soul eeking from the wayward horn an extraordinary depth of emotion and dramatic range. His cantabile style, as identifiable as a human voice in its emotional tone and dramatic role playing, may in a given solo, conjure up anguish, ecstasy, anger, fear, hilarity or haughtiness. Liebman’s music is storytelling of a very high order – content, accent, color and mood are all in place, on cue.”

Downbeat Magazine

Dave Liebman leads the brightest and most creative New York jazz musicians in dramatic large ensemble fashion as they burn through incredibly well-written arrangements of the jazz legend’s compositions.

Made up of the brightest and most creative New York jazz musicians, everyone is not only well-versed and experienced in the traditional big band performance practices, but each and every one of them are gifted soloists and renowned jazz musicians in their own right. What is not obvious until you hear the band is that collectively, the level of musicianship is so high that the band easily breaks the boundaries of the traditional big band. In addition to Liebman’s compositions and the writer’s creative arrangements, the unique sound of the DLBB is also due to how easily the group traverses the line between tonality and atonality; executes dramatic stylistic changes in the moment; and most importantly, can create collaborations of improvised music that are so well-aligned with the compositions that it is hard to tell what is or is not improvised. This, coupled with Liebman’s never ending pursuit of all possible avenues of expression in his soprano sax playing, offers the listener a new approach to the big band tradition.

‘…exhilarating…’

New York Times

Undoubtedly deserving of the title of modern day tenor titan, Dave Liebman has also made an important a contribution to the vocabulary of the soprano saxophone, the ‘straight horn’, whose popularity and more widespread adoption was furthered by John Coltrane in the 60s.

Generally speaking, it is a difficult instrument to master, apparently because the tuning and intonation present challenges for even the most skilled of practitioners. Despite having a smaller sound than a tenor or baritone, the soprano is capable of tremendous power as well as serenity – think of Coltrane’s turbulent whirlpools on the improvised sections and tranquil streams on the melody of My Favourite Things – and this finely crafted big band set by Liebman reinforces...
Read More at BBC
Dave Liebman is one of the world’s greatest contemporary saxophonists, a player who first came to prominence with Miles Davis’ 1970’s bands, appearing on albums such as “Get Up With It”, “On The Corner” and “Dark Magus”.

Liebman subsequently led his own influential groups Lookout Farm and Quest, both powerful outfits with the accent on collective improvisation, the latter an all acoustic but often thoroughly uncompromising ensemble. Liebman has recorded prolifically in pretty much every context from solo to big band and in a variety of styles including fusion, Latin, free improv and more. He’s a superb technician on both tenor and soprano saxophones plus flute and was initially influenced, as were so many of his contemporaries, by the sound of John Coltrane. Not everything he has attempted has worked but when Liebman’s good he’s very good...
Read More at The Jazz Mann
While nothing can replace witnessing the power, excitement and precision generated by a really good big band first hand, The Dave Liebman Big Band “live” performances on “As Always” is as close as you can get to actually being there.
Read More at The Notes on Jazz Blog
thex Created with Sketch.

Summit Records

Stacks Image 688942
play1

Jeremy Thompson Scriabin: The Final Recital

“A satisfying recording from a capable pianist. The third Scriabin sonata is passionate, and he (literally) hits all the right notes. I’ve always felt that this sonata is an underrated work that needs to be added to the mainstream piano literature. The other works are a nice interlude leading to the Fourth Sonata, which rounds out the program well.”
Kang, American Record Guide
Read More at MSR
Stacks Image 688952
Stacks Image 688954

“Jeremy Thompson, a talented young pianist currently living in Charlottesville, has chosen to duplicate the last recital Scriabin gave, on April 2, 1914. And despite the temporal twists, the ordering turns out to make good musical and emotional sense. Even the return to the Fourth Sonata gives the recital a firm sense of closure that it might not otherwise have... Thompson navigates the recital’s tricky currents with impressive agility... he’s got a good technique, and he plays with fluency and plenty of confidence... The engineering is fine, and the notes are good, too... the concept behind [this disc] is an illuminating one, and Scriabin aficionados should find it of interest.”
Peter J. Rabinowitz, Fanfare

“This [is an] extremely ample and satisfying recording... [Jeremy Thompson] both humble and sincere, gives Alexander Scriabin’s music fair flair without being overwrought with indulgent extravagances... M. Thompson’s interpretive skills give 'The Final Recital' a prosodic limpidness that well encapsulates Scriabin’s arresting life span. Jeremy Thompson’s perspectives in fond freshness can be transcribed as a synesthetic sojourn... This MSR Classics delivery is glowing and fulfilling.”
Christie Grimstad, ConcertoNet

[ * * * * ] “For this recording, Thompson performs on a 1927 Steinway, whose vintage and mellow tone approximate Scriabin’s instrument at his recital... Thompson injects the required passion, frenzy, and digital velocity to finish the “original” recital with unabashed abandon.”
Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition
Thompson’s playing is masterly throughout. The arresting Prelude in G minor Op 39/3 attests to the strength of his playing, while there are many and varied examples of his more poetic side. Thompson’s technique is fabulous (try the Etude Op 8/7), as it needs to be for the muscular Third Sonata, intensely performed here, voice-leading always intelligent.
The later pieces (mainly Opp 73 and 74) glint in astral half-light before the Fourth Sonata transports us to other realms. A fine, intelligent, well-recorded disc.

COLIN CLARKE - Read more at International Piano
thex Created with Sketch.

MSR Classics

Stacks Image 688652
play1

Jenny Lin "Get Happy"

Jenny Lin is one of those pianists who deserves a major career for the sheer intelligence and musicality of everything that she does. This collection of show tunes arranged by virtuoso pianists offers the perfect combination of the familiar (the melodies) and the new (the arrangements). The result is a tribute not just to Lin’s clever programming and impeccable pianism, but also to the many arrangers she has chosen...
Read More at Classics Today
Stacks Image 688660
Stacks Image 688662
“Remarkable technical command and a gift for melodic flow."
— The New York Times

About the meeting of the “popular” and the “serious” on Get Happy: Virtuoso Show Tunes for Piano, Jenny Lin says: “It depends on how one defines 'popular' and 'serious.' A lot of these pieces are extremely virtuosic. Perhaps the original tunes themselves are popular, but the materials used in the arrangements are serious. What sets these arrangements apart is that they are all by performing pianist...
Read More at Steinway.com
thex Created with Sketch.

Steinway & Sons

Stacks Image 688494
play1

Sean Chen "La Valse"

Chen's playing is brilliant, subtle, and spontaneous, and his mastery of the piano's tone colors makes the music highly effective, especially for those who want to hear the audible connections between Ravel and...
Read More at ArkivMusic
Stacks Image 688502
Stacks Image 688504
An American shooting star blessed with outstanding stage presence combined with an extraordinary technique and musicianship...
Read More at Steinway.com
“That Chen has performed music near and dear to his iconoclastic musical heart exudes through every moment of this impressive disc, a display of a superior digital talent guided by a penetrating artistic intellect.”
—Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition
Read More at SeanChenPiano.com
thex Created with Sketch.

Steinway & Sons

Trouble Man

I was involved in the preproduction, transferring, and remixing of Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man Sound Track.
Stacks Image 83245
play1

Trouble Man

It seems that masked men are knocking over the floating crap games of Chalky and Pete. Chalky and Pete hire the cool, loose, elegant Mr. T to fix things. Then, the masked manipulators set ... See full summary on IMDb»
Stacks Image 687841
Stacks Image 687845
Stacks Image 688983
thex Created with Sketch.
Stacks Image 83260
play1

The American Musicological Society (AMS) Lecture Series: Andy Flory -- "Reissuing Marvin: Musicology and the Modern Expanded" Edition

In his 2012 lecture at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Andy Flory considers the role of the musicologist as reissue producer. He was approached by Universal Music Group to provide musicological assistance with a reissue of Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man," an album closely related to a 1972 Blaxploitation film soundtrack composed by Gaye. The process of completing this work gave him a glimpse into the world of the modern reissue producer, a rarely-discussed agent responsible for creating historical documents of past releases for the modern marketplace.
Stacks Image 687894
thex Created with Sketch.
Stacks Image 83277
play1

Captain America: Winter Soldier

The “Trouble Man” soundtrack was singled out verbally in the blockbuster film Captain America: Winter Soldier as something Captain America should check out.  Captain America had been frozen for seventy years, so he had a bit of catching up to do. The producers polled people for the top list of things to include for him to catch-up on.
Stacks Image 687884
Story Line:
For Steve Rogers, awakening after decades of suspended animation involves more than catching up on pop culture; it also means that this old school idealist must face a world of subtler threats and difficult moral complexities. That becomes clear when Director Nick Fury is killed by the mysterious assassin, the Winter Soldier, but not before warning Rogers that SHIELD has been subverted by its enemies. See full summary on IMDb»
Stacks Image 687878
Stacks Image 687880
thex Created with Sketch.

Sono Luminus

Below are a few albums I have participated in recording, editing or both on internationally released albums on the classical label "Sono Luminus."
Stacks Image 688041
play1

Peter Sculthorpe - Del Sol String Quartet/Stephen Kent - The Complete String Quartets with Didgeridoo

In this amazing new release, The Del Sol String Quartet combines with didjeridu master Stephen Kent in Sculthorpe’s four string quartets that use this unusual but stunning combination. The results are very unique and attention-getting combining the raw, indigenous signature sound of the didjeridu with the very classical European sound of a string quartet. Part of Sculthorpe’s skill is to develop a sound that works amazingly well with such diverse combinations but also to create music that sounds at once traditional and “other worldly...
Read More at Audiophile Audition
Stacks Image 688049
Stacks Image 688051
This complete program is worthy of your attention and addition to your collection of adventurous classical music.
Read Review at axs
The music is exotic, sensual, tragic, and more. Sculthorpe really has the full measure of the medium, and his use of the didgeridoo works with the quartet surprisingly well. I can't say that this will be to all tastes, but those willing to listen will be rewarded. Stephen Kent – for a lack of a better word – rocks out on his instrument and makes it do wild things. And the Del Sol Quartet is equally willing to let loose; the results are magical.
Read More at Classical Net
thex Created with Sketch.
Stacks Image 688065
play1

Inscape - American Aggregate”

American Aggregate, the follow up to Inscape’s GRAMMY® nominated debut album Sprung Rhythm on the Sono Luminus label, explores the rich and varied sounds of American music in the 21st century. From the mechanized world of our cities to the natural beauty of our landscapes, from the sounds of jazz and rock to indigenous folk music...
Read More at Arkiv Music
Stacks Image 688072
Stacks Image 688074
The music of the Inscape collective possesses such charms. The American heart has been bruised, hardened and knotted in recent years, but this album seeks to unknot the stress, anxiety, and fear and to knit together a different sort of tapestry: one of lush instrumental tones, reflecting the diversity of American music now and...
Read More at A Closer Listen
Seascapes is a nicely thought out ‘theme’ collection of music inspired by the sea. There is certainly a rich musical heritage to draw upon, and pianist Janice Weber has not gone for the cliche, but unearthed some seldom heard works that are worthy of an extended...
Read More at Audiophile Audition
thex Created with Sketch.
Stacks Image 688084
play1

Zofo - "Zoforbit - A Space Odyssey"

The Pure Audio Blu-ray recording has remarkable sonic clarity and colour, with high resolution surround sound… © 2014 new-classics.co.uk Read complete review
Stacks Image 688435
Stacks Image 688094
Confronted with the title “A Space Odyssey,” memories of HAL 9000’s all-knowing red gaze and my own childlike wonder for that mysterious black monolith pervade my mind (I mean, seriously, what was that monolith thing?). Though, for all its MacGuffin plot devices fueled by “Big Dumb Objects,” Stanley Kubrick’s eponymous film instilled a wonder of creation, the unknown, and of the infinite possibilities of space. For all its inability to travel in the vacuum of space, ZOFO’s music in ZOFORBIT: A Space Odyssey manages to immerse us in an odyssey of its own.
Read More at I Care If You Listen
This…[new] offering in the Sono Luminus ZOFO discography is another revelation in to how much excitement that twenty fingers can generate…the performance of Holst’s The Planets in its four-hand transcription is absolutely riveting. The newer compositions exploit the many tonal colors that keys, hammers, pedals, and strings can generate. Come to this disc with no preconceptions and be prepared to leave it completely amazed!
Read More Blu-rayDefinition
A knock-your-socks off album of tremendous sonic import, with radiant performances to boot

This astounding album completely took me by surprise. Normally I am averse—or at least highly suspicious—of piano four-hands, but Zofo, or better yet, pianists Eva-Marie Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi knocked my socks off with this recording. First of all, who says that surround sound, and vivid surround sound at that, can’t benefit a solo piano? Believe me, with the rapturous noise that these two make, with infinite gradations of perfectly placed dynamics, you will experience the piano in a whole new way.

This is a great album, a true surround sonic spectacular, and full of superb performances that should not be missed. © 2014 Audiophile Audition Read complete review
thex Created with Sketch.
Stacks Image 688451
play1

Greg Ewer & Adam LaMotte Jean-Marie Leclair : The Complete Sonatas for Two Violins

From the first notes of the first bar of this excellent two-CD set, you know you’re in good hands and are going to hear some splendid music-making. The genre could run the risk of sameness or, perhaps worse, might invite spurious gimmicks by the performers to ‘liven it up’. Not a bit of that here: the soloists bring a persuasive blend of verve and technical brilliance mixed with unselfconscious insight to two hours of focused, intense, yet sanguine music from the mid-eighteenth...
Read More at MusicWeb International
Stacks Image 688459
Stacks Image 688461
For several years Greg Ewer, Oregon Symphony violinist AND driving force behind the chamber music group 45th Parallel, and Adam LaMotte of the Portland Baroque Orchestra have been working on a two-CD set of Jean-Marie LeClair’s Complete Sonatas for Two...
Read More at Oregon Arts Watch
Those who cherish these sonatas, those who admire Leclair, and those who simply love the violin—all should find these CDs and the accompanying Blu-ray highly attractive. The recorded sound’s fine, too, with no heavy breathing. Urgently recommended...
Read More at Arkiv Music
Hi Greg and Adam! Your new album has been out for a little more than a month now. It’s received some rave reviews including ones like this from Alto Riot: “Honestly it’s bit hard to believe there’s not really a whole string section playing somewhere in the back because violinists Greg Ewer and Adam LaMotte sound HUGE on their new album of music by Jean-Marie Leclair.” Is there anything about reading reviews by people who enjoy your music that brings out certain aspects of the project that...
Read More
thex Created with Sketch.
Stacks Image 688475
play1

Janice Weber - Seascapes

Seascapes is a nicely thought out ‘theme’ collection of music inspired by the sea. There is certainly a rich musical heritage to draw upon, and pianist Janice Weber has not gone for the cliche, but unearthed some seldom heard works that are worthy of an extended listen.
Read More at Audiophile Audition
Stacks Image 688482
Stacks Image 688484
The previous Sono Luminus release by the brilliant and (to my mind) underrated pianist Janice Weber mixed and matched familiar, rare, and unlikely piano pieces inspired by roses. She follows up with Seascapes, a collection of works by 14 composers that draw inspiration from–you guessed it–the sea. Unless you spend time in the piano repertoire’s obscure corners, you are not likely to have heard any of this music before.
Read More at Arkiv Music
Weber's latest recording is "Seascapes," pieces inspired by the sea. Reviewing it for Audiophile Audition, Mel Miller wrote, "With an excellent performance, an interesting choice of evocative compositions, and a full sound, there is a lot to like here." Her latest novel is "Swing Set." I asked about both of her artistic careers after she agreed to take my questions...
Read Complete Interview
thex Created with Sketch.