More and more projects are coming out of the studio and on to the shelves.
First, after a short burst of live tracking in July and a series of overdub sessions following, Sarah Price’s debut solo album, Sarahtonin, is now finished and will be released in June. She wrote and arranged the entire thing (short of one Radiohead cover, with a twist), and I engineered and produced the full album. Stay tuned for updates on the release party; we are planning a live show with the full band to let this one out to the public. Sarah created a gorgeous landscape of soul, jazz, and melt-in-your-mouth vocals with a warm, throwback feel that was received with resounding approval at our Kickstarter pre-release listening party. I have listened to this project more than anyone, and I still can’t get enough of it.
A view of the band tracking in DSA Studio One, back in July:
Congratulations Sarah! We’re all so proud of you and can’t wait for the world to hear this. It was such a joy to get to make this record with you!
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We recently wrapped tracking sessions for the University of Michigan Symphony Band’s new album (release date tba) in Hill Auditorium, and it was an enormous collaboration of fine talent and world class work that functioned like a precision-crafted machine under the direction of Michael Haithcock. I am very excited to begin post-production on this collection of recordings, among them a tuba concerto by Michael Daugherty, performed by Philadelphia Orchestra principal tubist and U-M alumnus, Carol Jantsch. I have a lot of reverence for the history of what has happened on the Hill stage in the past 100+ years, and this project adds greatly to this legacy. It was a joy to be behind the rig for these sessions.
I’d like to send a hearty congratulations to Mark Clague on all of the work we completed in the past year on Poets and Patriots, as well as the U-M Gershwin Piano acquisition and the subsequent dedication concert and panel discussion. In celebration of this occasion, we created this video to promote the arrival of George Gershwin’s Steinway Model A:
We also saw the release of Complete Music for Winds and Piano by the University of Iowa Faculty Winds, after a long pause on the shelf. It is currently available through MSR Classics. This project was a very fruitful collaboration with some dear friends and colleagues, old and new, that holds a special place for me personally, as it contains the last studio recordings of our dear, departed friend, oboist Mark Weiger.
Last month we saw the release of Diana Gannet’s Artemis in the Oak Grove, which I recorded over the last two years with her at the University of Michigan in Stamps Auditorium, as well as the re-release of Old Wine, New Bottles with Volkan Orhon and Come Away: Recital Transcriptions for Double Bass and Piano with John Ellis, piano. These albums are now available on CD now, as well as the re-releases being available through Block M Records via iTunes. Artemis is a very thoughtful and engaging set of performances containing, among the list, new compositions by Anthony Stoops and Evan Premo; two extremely talented and virtuosic alumni from Diana’s studio (and good friends of both of ours).
More updates are coming soon!