After a two-year break due to the pandemic, we had the pleasure to record again with great musicians as part of the of My Reel Club™ project. This time we also participated as a label.

The My Reel Club™ recording events were launched 3 years ago with ambitious plans. The Club members and founders were determined to introduce audiophiles and music lovers, who were also engaged in the technical background, the work in a recording studios, and thus to open a unique opportunity for them to understand and appreciate how music is recorded. Unfortunately, the pandemic has made it temporarily impossible to realise some of our ideas. Hopefully, the situation is improving, and we are still determined to expand our special recordings, although with a limited audience for the time being.

This time, we worked with Gábor Juhász’s Trio, featuring Julia Karosi and Tony Lakatos on the recording of the album Planets at Digital Pro recording studio. Gabor is a Gramophone and Artisjus award-winning jazz guitarist and composer, and Aegon co-award-winning jazz guitarist and composer. He taught jazz guitar at the Béla Bartók Music Secondary School and the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music and was named Jazz Guitarist of the Year 2021 in Hungary. My relationship with Gábor goes back a long way, even our musical careers met once, I was happy to welcome him after many years.

The trio, founded in 2006, features Zoltán Kovács on double bass and György Jeszenszky on drums. They are highly skilled musicians with a masterly command of their instruments, who have also brought much joy to the crew with their exciting playing and humility in the course of our work. I highly regard musicians who do not consider themselves, but the whole production is essential in such situations (too). They are like that. The trio has been completed with two new members this time, according to Gábor’s musical plans. Julia Karosi added an impressive colour to the material and the male group with her truly unique vocal technique. Tony Lakatos has been living abroad for some time. He is a saxophonist well-known to all jazz lovers in Hungary and worldwide with a highly considerable international reputation. Now he has returned home for a few days to record this album. His skilful routine combined with his musical and human authority made an outstanding contribution to the success of the project.

István Matók, the head of the Digital Pro Studio, where the recording took place, is a leading figure in the Hungarian sound engineering community and is well-known to My Reel Club™ members, having hosted our first studio meetings in 2018.

He confidently managed the technical crew and equipment from the planning stage of the recording. We recorded the main points of reference based on the musical ideas, time and technical equipment available:

• The recording is completed “live”. We call it Live-To-Tape™ and Live-To-Disk™ process. All the musicians were playing simultaneously, in a shared space, to see and hear each other live. They can react to each other in real-time by this method. It is essential in this improvisational musical style.
• Sound processing and effects are kept to a minimum.
• We record what is happening in the studio with carefully chosen microphones.
• We use various recording technologies, producing 192kHz/24bit PCM material in ProTools, stereo DXD/DSD material with Merging Audio’s Anubis and analogue tape stereo recording. The three versions will be targeted at different audiences, formats and produced differently.
• As we stick to the original sound, there will be no mastering and post-production on the DXD and analogue tape recording. However, the 192k/24-bit PCM multi-track recording will be produced with usual post-production and mastering to fulfil commercial expectations and provide an Atmos version. The high-resolution PCM recording was done on the AVID ProTools system installed in the Digital Pro studio. Each microphone signal is on a separate channel, allowing for post- production sound mixing required by the future CD, Atmos release and streaming service provider’s requirements.

Gábor Juhász brought two instruments to the recording.

He played track “Copernicus in Tartu” on a Collings C10 Deluxe acoustic guitar. He picked a legendary Gibson ES 175 Herb Ellis Model Plus electric guitar with Thomastik Jazz Swing JS13 strings for the other tracks, the thickest set of which he used for a full sound. The electric guitar was played through a tube/FET hybrid amp built by András Nyerges, and a 30 cm Fane speaker, miked with Sennheiser MD 421 and Shure SM 76 microphones. The guitar sound was a mix of the two mic feeds.

Zoltán Kovács’s double bass was a 2006 model by Géza Fábián, with two Neumann TLM103 microphones placed in front of it, close to the strings and under the bridge. In front of the saxophones was a Warm Audio 67 Tube Condenser (Neumann U67 clone) microphone, and Julia Karosi sang into a Warm Audio 47 Tube Condenser (Neumann U47 clone) microphone with great passion and excitement.

For drums, AKG D25 (kick), AKG C251 (snare), WA-84 (hi-hats), AKG C414 (toms) and AKG C12A (overhead) mics worked around György Jeszenszky’s custom-made and great sounding DDrum rig:

Everyone played in the same studio space in the recording room but separated by screens to reduce unwanted acoustic leakage between instruments. The isolation is not perfect, the sound still got in where it shouldn’t have, but that’s inevitable in a live recording. If the musicians had been completely separated, the sound would have been technically better, but the musical content would probably have been compromised. The signals of the microphones, selected based on the lessons learned from legendary jazz recordings, were fed into Trident, Warm Audio and Bricasti preamps, where they underwent some light analogue dynamics processing. Unfortunately, this is unavoidable. It would be virtually impossible to record the events in the right quality without it. Finally, the amplified signals were fed into a 16-channel APB-DynaSonics analogue (!) console used for live mixing and programme output distribution.

The tape recorder and DXD/DSD recordings were made using the console PGM outputs without any digital processing, and the two stereo recorders received the same mix from the console’s L-R main output. The signals were digitised from the analogue desk’s channel-by-channel Direct Outputs for the ProTools multi-track recording, with each microphone on a separate track.

This is the working environment in the studio control room with the three recording systems installed:

Not much space left in the control room, but just enough for the producer and my friend Ferenc Koscsó, the MRC project’s innovator and organiser. The analogue mixing console and preamps on the right with the tape recorder, the ProTools system control surface in the middle, and the DXD/DSD recorder on the left. The latter is a supercharged Luxor PC with linear power supply (optimized for Merging’s Pyramix), Pink Faun’s OCXO clocks for the motherboard, passive cooling and custom cabling, running Merging Pyramix software in DXD/DSD mode. As being usual in case of MRC recordings, the A to D conversion was the highest resolution available with today’s technology.

The Merging Anubis interface was driven from a high-quality linear power supply, connected in stereo 2 channels, with Evidence Lyric cables to the mixing console’s output. The analogue tape recording was made with a Nagra IV-S NQS-LSP reel to reel recorder, SM468 tape at 38 cm/s, with CCIR equalisation, under the supervision of Tamás Perczel. We used Yamaha NS- 10 near-field and Dynaudio midfield monitors for monitoring in the studio. We all brought our own headphones, including a high-end Focal. A well-known headphone can help us immensely to control and fine-tune the recording.

I have lived in various studios for 25 years. I have ‘retired’ from such ordeals, but I still occasionally enjoy to participate in more serious activities, such as the My Reel Club™ recordings. Living among so many knobs, switches and reels for long time teach you to respect the technique and your colleagues. It’s an exhilarating feeling when you get to work with like-minded and like-mannered people, as was the case with this recording. Due to the musicians’ busy schedules, we had a limited time of only one-half day for rehearsals and another half day to record. This can only be achieved if there are no technical problems to slow down the process and if everyone is in control and maintains their own level to a high standard, including the technical crew and the musicians. The one day installation and set-up went smoothly, the technical staff did their job with confidence. Let it remain between us that many musicians would feel uncomfortable in this “live” situation because they are typically used to the fact that everything can be corrected in recording and post-production. That was deliberately not available this time, so great discipline and concentration were required.

The signal gaining is an essential parameter for live recordings. Since there is no room for a correction here in a “live” recording, the recording signal levels must be adjusted to achieve the highest possible signal-to- noise ratio and dynamics without overdriving. In the case of My Reel Club™, recordings, limiters and compressors are not used for this function, so levelling is a bit stressful, and there is a constant fear of recording. Fortunately, I managed to adjust everything so that the peaks on the digital material dropped to around -5 dB FS, which is still a safe distance from the deadly 0 dB level, but already results in excellent dynamics. And speaking of dynamics… When listening to music at home, a recurring question is what volume reproduces what is actually happens in the live music. This time, we continuously monitored the loudness in the studio, as shown in the graph below. We will also give you a little help for the listening process in that the album will feature a sustained saxophone sound as a reference. If you set the volume of this sound at home to between 75–80 dB SPL (yes, unfortunately, an instrument is required for this), you can enjoy the whole material at roughly the same dynamics and volume as it was played live in the studio. Of course, this won’t work for many people due to the limitations of playback systems and rooms, but I think it’s worth a try. Below you can see the original (C weighting, slow av.) sound pressure curve of the track “Saturn”, measured in the studio at a distance of 3–5 m from the musicians. Peak values were 98–100 dB SPL, with an average of 85–90 dB SPL(C).

The technology performed flawlessly during the recording, and I didn’t have to constantly juggle it (despite many beliefs, this is one of the main characteristics of pro audio over commercial equipment). So I had time to listen to music while I worked. In concerts and studios, I’m always competing with the musician and the sound engineer in myself; sometimes I am focusing on musical details, sometimes on technical parameters. Fortunately, they tend to support each other; there is no fierce battle between them. While recording, I was sometimes able to contemplate the technical beauty of the Nagra tape recorder and the musicians’ playing too. As a bass player I particularly enjoyed listening to Zoltan Kovács. The miracle of music being made just a few metres away from us, with attuned minds and equipment, is still a thrill for me.

We listened to the recorded material together. Some requests were made by the musicians and some lessons were learned by us. At the end of the process, we will need all the creators’ blessing to produce a recording approved by all the participants. This also reflects that the sound engineer(s) is/are not the final decision maker(s) in the studio. They cannot make decisions solely on all matters. Still, they/he/she will respond to the technical, aesthetic and artistic requests in a chosen way based on their experience and professional knowledge. The question has also arisen about which recordings represent a higher quality or are closer to a “live” sound. “Live” is in quotes here because we in the control room are not hearing the original sound of the instruments, but the sound of the microphones, and we can compare the recordings to that. It was agreed that the DXD and the analogue tape recording were very close to the live sound, with only a tiny difference in taste. For my part, I would put the digital DXD version first. My analogue tape operator friend Tamás Perczel, of course, voted for tape. Obviously, our ears are tuned differently, but that’s okay It is worth noting that the enormous differences between the recordings, which are mentioned by audiophiles way too often, of which we only perceived a fraction, each containing much more information than most home HiFi systems can show.

The recordings are done, processing, uploading, publishing and all the associated paperwork is next, and with a bit of luck, the production will be released to the public in a few weeks. After that, we plan to make it available on major streaming providers, high-res file download portals and as an audio CD and possibly as vinyl too. My Reel Club™ members will get them first. So, I have selected the versions that the musicians have voted, making some basic corrections (editing, tracking, making fade in/out runs, signal level correction, converting to multiple file formats, uploading metadata, etc.), all done in the privacy of my own home.

The final product is very different from the usual sound of commercial music releases, mainly in the dynamic range. Because only minimal dynamic compression was applied, the recording preserves the difference in volume between the quieter and the more powerful musical events to almost 60 dB. (This is typically 15–30 dB for commercial material). Playback of this album may be problematic for some home systems. To get the quietest details to sound, they need to exceed the background noise level in terms of SPL, typically 35–45 dB SPL in a home environment. So, the peaks are around 100 dB, which weaker HiFi chains cannot reproduce enjoyably without aggressive distortion. But then again, hi-fi fans have long cherished the dream of high dynamic range recording, so there you go! Another feature of the recording is that the timbre may seem duller at first listen than on most releases without mastering. I suggest to give your ears time because the human ear can correct such “problems” in a few minutes! The frequency range is quite wide, and the graph below shows that there is still plenty of musical content above 20 kHz:

A 2-minute sample is now available in 44kHz/24bit, 352kHz/24bit and DSD128 formats.

The post My Reel Club™ – Recording of Juhász Gábor Trio featuring Julia Karosi and Tony Lakatos: ‘Planets’ appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

As each album was created in very different circumstances the list of differences is longer. Below I take you ‘backstage’ at the recording sessions of Carmen Gomes’ three DSD/DXD releases, available at NativeDSD Music.

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Any purchased Carmen Gomes album purchase comes with an exclusive-to-NativeDSD video of the track “How Long”, made during the recording session of the album Don’t You Cry.

Carmen Gomes Sings The Blues

Carmen Sings the Blues is live, audience present, and the music is played with a certain edge; head engineer Frans de Rond remembers; “Normally when recording a live concert, I record the ”dress rehearsal” as well in order to have repair material just in case parts of the actual concert does not go as planned. However due to a technical failure, which I only managed to solve 10 minutes! before the start of the concert, this was no longer possible. So this recording is all first takes.

Carmen Gomes Inc. is a working band with lots of ‘road experience’ they remained calm and in good spirits despite the mildly chaotic rehearsal situation. Maybe the failed dress rehearsal contributed to the extraordinary dedication and concentration they performed with at the actual concert. It was now or never.

When an audience is present, a synergy occurs. The audience becomes part of the music making and helps spur the musicians on to greater heights.

I placed the musicians in front of a stereo pair of microphones with additional spot microphones on each instrument. 

Musicians playing without headphones,creates a number of musical and technical benefits:

As they are not ‘’separated’ by the headphones, the musicians create a natural and musical balance, easily captured by the main stereo microphone pair.  Now the need for compression to control levels is no longer necessary, and the boxed sound which is so common on many modern recordings is absent.

This all sounds very straight forward but for this approach to work, certain criteria has to be fulfilled;

The studio has to have a good sound. 

The musicians have to be very good and well prepared as it is very difficult to repair mistakes because of the “cross talk” between the instruments. 

We have to be very precise placing the microphones and the musicians at the right distance to the main stereo microphones and the right distance to each other.

And with a live audience in the studio, we pray that they really turn off their cell phones (before the concert we always politely ask them to) and that the ones with a bad cold choose to stay at home.”

Don’t You Cry

Don’t You Cry is a pure One Microphone recording. The credo for the recording was 

One Hall, One Band, One Microphone, One Take, One Source. It was the first of our critically acclaimed one mic recordings. The reason for us to start recording in this way was the basic idea that we have one pair of ears, so why not take a stereo microphone, place it in front of the band and press record?… easy does it …but somehow it does not work like that. At least we had not yet heard a one microphone recording of a whole band that we found completely satisfying. 

We are big fans of Josephson microphones. They are the secret to our critically acclaimed double bass sound. So we thought that if one mic would be able to do the impossible, it would be the Josephson C700S stereo microphone.

We had hoped to be able to try it out on a Carmen Gomes’ recording session, but there was an unforeseen problem with the delivery, the mic would not be on time. Having booked the studio and the musicians, we decided to go ahead and record the album the way we mostly do; a stereo pair and spot mic’s on the individual instruments.

We had just recorded the last song of the session when the Josephson C700S arrived.

The band had to go and play a gig in the evening and Frans had a lot on his mind that day, so nobody was really in the mood for testing a new microphone but Carmen said: Come on, lets just make a quick take of something simple; “Let’s play ‘How Long’!”. So we all gathered around the mic, made the take, packed up and rushed off to the gig of the evening.

Multi track recording has advantages and disadvantages. The good is that you can make an instrument louder or softer as you please. The bad thing when the recording is done in one room is phase. Maybe, the most time consuming aspect with multi mic recording is getting the phase between the microphones right. Frans de Rond is a true genius in that field and his expertise is one of the secrets to our well defined sound stage.

Now with only one mic the challenge lay elsewhere.

Mixing was no longer possible. We would have to make the complete sound stage right there by carefully moving each instrument closer or further away as well as left and right in relation to the microphone.

Carmen was given a headphone so she could hear exactly what the mic was hearing. She could then direct the musicians and with hand gestures let each band member play louder or softer.

Guitarist Folker Tettero decided to play the whole session on his old archtop guitar. It is quite unique that you can actually hear the pure acoustic sound of the guitar blending in so well with the sound from his custom made amplifier. Listen to Folkers comping during the bass solo in ‘Where can I Go’; that’s practically the pure sound of his guitar and not to forget; the sound of his hands.

Special credits goes to drummer Bert Kamsteeg who, while playing a full modern drum kit, managed to drive and colour each tune with his unique style, but never over power the pure non amplified sound of Carmen’s voice and my upright bass.

Up Jumped the Devil

On Up Jumped the Devil, discovering the music of Robert Johnson, we in a sense tried to expand on the idea of a one mic recording.

The concept for the album was to create an imaginary road movie where one perceives Robert walking late at night, en route in the Mississippi Delta, reflecting back on his life.

The low A, 27.5 Hz, from the bowed down tuned double bass representing the Mississippi night, the drums creating the sounds surrounding the night and the guitar being Robert’s mind.

For this to happen Frans needed to be able to use all his expertise in creating what I like to call a visual sound.

Frans de Rond explains;

“There are several reasons at play why I call this is a One Mic+ recording.

On this recording the role of drummer Bert Kampsteeg is very important. We wanted him to be able to play as freely and dynamic as possible. 

I realized that if we had Carmen up close to the one mic she was creating an acoustic baffle that covered up certain frequencies.

The same was true for Peter Bjørnild’s double bass.

By moving Carmen and bassist Peter Bjørnild further away and supporting them with two Josephson C700A microphones, the drum sound got much more present.

We wanted the small ‘soundscape’ compositions to have a very dark atmosphere (Peter said he wanted them sounding as dark as the Mississippi night), so I decided to add a spaced pair of Josephson C617 microphones up very high in the studio and let them be our main source of ambience. I think that worked very well. And also the deep drop tuned low ‘A’ of 27.5 Hz from the double bass got picked up very well by that pair. Such a low note is almost impossible to hear close up, somehow you only hear the upper harmonics generated, so that was an extra benefit of the ambient pair. And it made me fall even more in love with the sound of studio 2.

You could argue that this is a return to old fashioned multi mic recording but I don’t think that is true, drums and guitar and the main part of the double bass sound is still coming from the Josephson C700S. The microphone is absolutely central to the sound stage we have created.

The two C700A support microphones are identical to the C700S except that each has only one figure of 8 capsule.

But the beauty of these mic’s are that spill coloration is much less of a problem. So they are perfect as spot mic’s.

Another funny thing….I keep learning things about the C700S. I have to keep forcing myself to keep experimenting with distance, closer or further away from the mic, it is absolutely crucial to get the best possible sound. I don’t think I have ever captured Folker Tettero’s guitar better than on this album and it was a question of moving the right leg of the table with the amp on, 2 cm. (0,787 inch) backwards and there the sound was! Unbelievable.” Frans de Rond.

Frans de Rond has been Carmen Gomes Inc’ engineer of choice for 26 years now.

And there is more to come. Robert Johnson part 2, a Ray Charles tribute and we still have to mix the 2018 multitrack DXD recording that got interrupted by the Josephson c700s revelation.

As a special gift for our fans at Native DSD, 

Frans mixed and mastered a not yet published video recording of the first take of How Long from the Don’t You Cry sessions. Notice how Carmen with hand gestures tells us to pick up the pace half way through the song. That’s why first takes are the best, there is always that little bit of magic.

Peter Bjørnild

The post In The Studio with Carmen Gomes – Producer’s Note appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Jan Bouman played the French horn in the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. On the lookout for a new piano, he came across a pianola, a mechanical instrument with a reputation as a musical absurdity. As a professional musician he posed himself the question whether the pianola could be employed in a wide repertoire. In so doing he became quite captivated by this unique, late nineteenth-century invention.

The first pianolas were constructed as a separate fitting, later to be usually replaced by a permanent, internal mechanism. Together with their music rolls, they remained in production until the early 1930s. Considerable skill was required to transform music scores into mathematical patterns on the pianola roll.

Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is heard on this album, performed by George Gershwin, with the aid of a separate fitting, made by the American Aeolian company. It is a remarkable apparatus: little felted levers, resting on the keys of the piano like the pianist’s fingers, are activated by the perforations in the music roll, which trigger small exhaust-valves linked to a wind reservoir in which a degree of under pressure is maintained by the player’s feet. The greater the under pressure, the louder the sound.

The operator, the pianolist, must acquire the proficiency of a pianist in terms of rapidity and refinement of touch. Most of the perforated rolls were executed based on sheet music. They are consequently in strict time, lacking tempo changes, rubato, and phrasing. The operator creates such nuance during the performance by means of the tempo-handle, a rod linked to the pedal of the pianola.

The music roll employed on this album is a registration of George Gershwin’s own playing. The timing and duration of the notes and the use of the pedal are therefore predetermined by him. But the pianolist, con-trolling the roll’s movement with his feet, determines the dynamics, including the accents, by treading more or less energetically. With his right hand he operates the tempo regulator and the dynamics of the high and low notes of the piano, while with the left hand he operates a little handle linked to the right pedal of the piano. Wrong notes are virtually ruled out. But at the same time, the instrument obliges the pianolist to devote full attention to a musically satisfying interpretation.

On the present recording Rhapsody in Blue is heard in its original version, as performed at the 1924 premiere by Paul Whiteman’s jazz band, and scored for two clarinets, oboe, three saxophones, two horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, percussion, banjo, violins, and double bass.

A piano roll made in 1925, featuring the composer as soloist, was discovered by chance. There was just one problem, however, for the roll comprised not only the solo part but also the accompaniment (piano) part. The 5,000 to 6,000 little perforations were sealed by Jan Bouman, and the result is nothing less than a revelation.

Gershwin proves to be a capricious soloist, and much more jazzy than present-day concert pianists, who often render a ‘romanticized’ version of the piece. Another surprise, and highly convincing too, are the THREE final chords of the first movement, which today are always omitted.

In the words of Major Arjan Tien: “We can now enjoy Gershwin’s interpretation on a piano roll of his own playing. Conspicuous is the enormous, extreme freedom that he takes with his own character directions such as meno mosso e poco scherzando, which is ‘outside’ the tempo and more like molto scherzando. The messa di voce (crescendo– decrescendo) too is pronouncedly interpreted as rubato rather than simply as louder and softer. What is more, he takes great liberty with the phrasing, sometimes on the verge of being unrhythmical, which for as accompanists was no mean challenge.”

Earlier DSD Stereo & DSD Multichannel Releases with the Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy on Channel Classics

Cover Photograph by Frank Kramer

The post George Gershwin is the soloist on the new DSD 256 “Rhapsody in Blue” recording! appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Now that all 3 of these albums have been released in DSD (and are available at the NativeDSD Music store), I thought it would be time to see what is happening In The DSD Studio. What I’ve found, as always, is that there are indeed some very interesting albums just released.

Michelle Mayne-Graves & Lifeline Quartet – Lifeline: Music of the Underground Railroad

A fine place to start is with Yarlung and their release from Michelle Mayne-Graves and the Lifeline Quartet. Yarlung Producer Bob Attiyeh and Special Advisor Billy Mitchell are the duo that brought the Yuko Mabuchi Trio to Yarlung and NativeDSD. So, it is only fitting that we start this edition of In The DSD Studio with their latest discovery – Michelle Mayne-Graves and the Lifeline Quartet.

The quartet brings gospel music and spiritual music from the Underground Railroad to life. In the Lifeline Quartet’s upcoming DSD release, Lifeline: Music of the Underground Railroad, they perform 12 spiritual songs including Down by The Riverside, Motherless Child, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen and When The Saints Go Marching In.

To give you a taste of what is in store on this album, look (and listen) to this YouTube video of the quartet performing Wade In The Water. It’s a powerful track that demonstrates why this album has been much anticipated. It is available in DSD Stereo and DSD Multichannel, exclusively at NativeDSD, it really is something special!

Moreno Viglione, Renato Gattone, Augusto Creni – The Manouche Project

Next we have an album from the team at Forward Music Italy titled The Manouche Project. It features the trio of Moreno Viglione, Renato Gattone, and Augusto Creni.

NativeDSD listeners will recognize Renato Gattone as the producer and creator of the album Les Chats Noir (The Black Cats), a wonderful DSD Stereo recording that features the French Jazz Swing music. Les Chats Noir has been a listener favorite at NativeDSD for some time and was recently one of our first releases in Stereo DSD 512. (It sounds great in DSD 512, in case you haven’t heard it yet!)

For the new project, Moreno Viglione, Renato Gattone, and Augusto Creni are recording at Forward Music Studios in Italy using a Merging Technologies Hapi Analog to DSD Converter. The album is being recorded in native DSD 256 and promises to be a fine follow-up to Les Chats Noir. (It’s on my want list already, even though it’s still in the studio).

Introducing Merel Vercammen

The team at TRPTK is also In The DSD Studio these days. Their current project is an album titled Introducing Merel Vercammen. The album is due out in the Fall and will feature the violinist with soprano Bernadeta Astari and cellist Maya Fridman (who already has several DSD releases at the NativeDSD Music store)..

Recording for this album is happening at the Old St. Victor Church in Batenburg. The sessions will be TRPTK’s first recording using a full surround kit of top of the line DPA Microphones, paired with ultra-high-end custom microphone cables by Furutech going directly into a Merging Technologies HAPI converter.

TRPTK is also taking full advantage of this venue and setup. They have another session planned with Merel Vercammen and vibraphonist Vincent Houdijk. So, we have yet another DSD album from TRPTK on the way! What can I say, the DSD Studio activity is very busy these days.

Dana Zemtsov & Anna Fedorova – A La Francaise

To round things out, we have A La Francaise with Dana Zemstov and Anna Fedorova. This project at Channel Classics with Producer and Recording Engineer Jared Sacks featured a live recital in front of a small audience of 10 at MCO in Hilversum, The Netherlands.

The album will feature all French inspired music by non-French composers, except for the very beginning and very end of the album. The first piece is Milhaud’s Sonata No. 1 for Viola and Piano and the last piece is Fauré’s Après un Rêve. In between we find French inspired music by Enescu, Clarke, Werkman and Kugel. All performed by Zemstov on Viola and Fedorova on Piano. The album is due out in November 2019.

(update, this album is now available, see below Silhouettes)

In the meantime, Dana Zemtsov and Anna Fedorova have several DSD albums available at NativeDSD Music. You are invited to give them a listen during your next visit to the NativeDSD Music store.

Dana Zemstov at Native DSD Music

Anna Fedorova at Native DSD Music

The post In The DSD Studio! appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts this past January, Washington DC’s Cherry Blossom Festival at Blues Alley on April 15^th and at The Jazz Bakery at Moss Theater on April 26th in Santa Monica, California.

Many thanks to Randy Bellous and Toyota Motor North America for underwriting.

Here’s a video snippet of the Miles Davis album, and here is So What.

Before I tell you a little more about Yuko and Miles Davis, here’s a sneak peek at Yarlung’s upcoming release on NativeDSD. We recorded Lifeline: Music of the Underground Railroad in Samueli Theater, a beautiful concert hall you know from our prior recordings with Sibelius Piano Trio volumes One and Two, and James Matheson. Here is the main YouTube video.

You know Yuko Mabuchi Trio well, including thanks to our very own Brian Moura at NativeDSD, who honored Yuko Mabuchi Trio with a coveted listener’s choice award at PFO in November. Joining the Trio for this concert and recording was JJ Kirkpatrick, the trumpet virtuoso from Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet, also beloved on NativeDSD.

Sophisticated Lady Jazz Quartet album overview

Yuko chose several Miles Davis favorites for her latest release, including Nardis, So What and Blue & Green.  With underwriting support from Steven A. Block, Raulee Marcus and Leslie Lassiter, Yarlung commissioned Missing Miles, which Yuko created in honor of Miles himself.  Missing Miles concluded the concert and we end with it on this album.  Ann Mulally underwrote Ikumi’s Lullaby, an original composition by Yuko.  Ikumi’s Lullaby opened our concert, but it comes as the fourth track on our release. Here is the album booklet.

Thanks to a warm invitation from Dr. Antonio Damasio, we returned to Cammilleri Hall at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC to give this concert and make this recording.

Neville Roberts (The UK’s HiFi Choice) writes “As anticipated, it is superb!  The Lullaby gently relaxes you into the environment of… Cammilleri Hall.  Yuko’s sympathetic rendition of ‘So What’ … was true to him, but with a freshness and energy that Yuko and her team imparted to the performance – wonderful…  a real homage to Miles Davis, but with Yuko’s individuality imprinted on her super compositions.”

Toyota Motor North America joined executive producer Randy Bellous in underwriting this project.  Read more about Yuko’s and Yarlung’s connections with Toyota in our Producer’s Notes.

It is a thrill to work with Yuko, JJ, Del and Bobby.  I look forward to hearing what these young virtuosi create next.

Enjoy!

Yuko Mabuchi, Del Atkins, Bobby Breton, JJ Kirkpatrick—Cooper Bates photography

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“Where The Fence Is The Highest” comes from a Danish proverb that one should never take the easy route if they want to achieve anything. The best things come from taking the high road and actively working on getting the best.

It is important for artists to record in an environment they can connect with

Brendon Heinst

Our something old was the beautiful MCO Studio 2 in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Built in 1929, the Muziek Centrum voor de Omroep has seen the greatest and most legendary jazz artists in

history. It was recently completely renovated, but the great vibe that existed back then is still there in abundance. The acoustics of the studio were perfect for the album, not too roomy but with a nice, lush reverb to it due to the high ceiling. Seeing how important it is for artists to record in an environment they can connect with, MCO Studio 2 was the obvious choice for this album.

The two jazz ensembles, one for each suite, were the “something new” – a new generation of great artists, all outstanding in their field. Japan Suite, for example, a more lyrical suite inspired by Hokusai wood block paintings, was written for and recorded with Teis himself (guitar), Fuensanta Méndez (vocals), Xavi Torres (piano), Niccolo Ricci (tenor sax), Jort Terwijn (double bass), and Guy Salamon (drums). The other suite, titled Armed To The Teeth, was written for and recorded with Teis himself, Mo van der Does (alto sax), Alistair Payne (trumpet), Jort Terwijn (double bass), and Sun-Mi Hong (drums). These are, I’d argue, currently the jazz legends of a new generation.

Then the “something borrowed”. We wanted to combine our ultra-modern, very high-end transparent microphones and preamplifiers with vintage legendary microphones or reissues of them, such as the Neumann U67 and M149 or the vintage ribbon mic on the guitar amplifier, all of which we borrowed from a fellow audio engineer (thanks, Frans de Rond!). Teis was also able to arrange for an amazing vintage Fender amplifier to accompany his Gibson hollowbody guitar. It was a phenomenal experience to combine these amazing pieces of vintage equipment with our modern technologies and high-end equipment.

These raw, blues-rock influences shine through in both his music and the sound

Our “something blue” is rather “something blues” however. Teis Semey, having picked up the guitar at a very early age, listened to and was inspired by a lot of blues music. In an interview he told he started working at a café that had blues jam sessions every now and then, and that he felt inspired by this genre and the freedom it brings. You can hear it especially clearly on the Armed to the Teeth suite, where these raw, blues-rock influences shine through in both his music and the sound.

And there you have it. Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. The key ingredients to not just a great wedding and good fortune for a marriage, but to us most of all the perfect marriage between a great recording venue, amazing musicians, and vintage and modern technology. All of that with a healthy dose of the blues.

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We don’t edit. What you hear on this album is real. Jung-A performed this recital for our recording team and executive producer as you hear it.”

Bob Attiyeh

We dedicate this album to Simon Woods and his wonderful family (more about that below) and to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which celebrates its 100^th Anniversary Season this year. Please see our album booklet with more photographs here.

This album is the result of a joyful collaboration between many people; I think you will feel this energy when you listen to the recording. Jung-A’s infectious and delightful sense of humor infuses the musical performance, our choices for the repertoire, and warmly colors our memories of this project.

Fellow Yarlung engineers Arian Jansen and Elliot Midwood worked closely with us during rehearsals, set up and the recording itself. Yarlung Executive Producer Jim Mulally joined us for the recital and helped craft the shape of this recording.

Most of Jung-A’s rehearsals in Walt Disney took place overnight, starting at 10pm and ending at 6 or 7am the next morning

Bob Attiyeh

Among the team who put this together, the person I hope this album most heartily celebrates is our organist, Jung-A Lee herself. Jung-A performs all over the world. In fact, she left for Paris for a concert in St. Etienne Cathedral in Meaux during our rehearsal period. It was France’s National Organ Day; Jung-A couldn’t resist, and she returned as fresh from this trip as she had left. In fact, because the Los Angeles Philharmonic was performing and rehearsing daily in WDCH during this part of the season, most of Jung-A’s rehearsals in Walt Disney took place overnight, starting at 10pm and ending at 6 or 7am the next morning. Jung-A joked that her nighttime rehearsals helped her avoid jetlag during her trips to Europe and Asia during this period. This gives you an inkling of Jung-A’s glow and positive spirit.

Jung-A earned her doctorate at Boston University, her master’s at Yale where she earned the Charles Ives prize, and her undergraduate degree at Toronto University. Jung-A served as organ scholar at The Memorial Church, Harvard University, during her time in Boston.

When not performing around the United States or overseas, Jung-A serves as organist at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California and performs regularly with Robert Istad and the Pacific Chorale at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. In fact, it is Rob Istad, with whom Yarlung recorded the choral album Nostos, who originally introduced us to Jung-A.

He must have spent a good thirty hours listening to our first album with me, critiquing, encouraging and suggesting new ideas and changes before the album was finished and ready for pressing.

Bob Attiyeh

We are fortunate at Yarlung. Titans in the music world have given generously of their time, talent and financial support to enable Yarlung to thrive. We maintain that “Yarlung Is Too Small To Fail” in an environment where music doesn’t sell as much as we would like. But in reality, Yarlung succeeds thanks to the talents of our musicians and composers, and thanks to exceptional support and guidance from our executive producers.

Elliot Midwood took me and Yarlung Records under his wing at the beginning. He must have spent a good thirty hours listening to our first album with me, critiquing, encouraging and suggesting new ideas and changes before the album was finished and ready for pressing.

Elliot the philanthropist has not only underwritten many of our most successful albums, but Elliot the engineer has designed some of the recording equipment we use that contributes to that ephemeral quality critics refer to as the “Yarlung Sound.” In Jung-A’s album, and most other Yarlung recordings, Elliot designed the microphone preamplification we use. This critical component takes the whisper coming from our microphones and converts it into the full tonal and dynamic sound (delicate at times and thunderous at others) that we record onto our master tape and into our high resolution digital recorder a HAPI made by our friends at Merging Technologies in Switzerland, without the use of any mixing boards. In this recording, we used Arian Jansen’s analog SonoruS Holographic Imaging processor to incorporate two rear hall microphones into our stereo image captured by an AKG C24 microphone in front.

hile I was holding down as many keys on the organ as my hands and feet could depress to give us peak volumes, it was Elliot on his hands and knees on the stage floor adjusting the levels on his microphone preamps.

Bob Attiyeh

Elliot tailored these vacuum-tube microphone preamplifiers specifically to give me the sound that I hear on stage with our musicians, and that I want you to hear in the finished product. Elliot designed new circuitry and made adjustments to his earlier Messenger preamplifier, which many audiophiles know through Elliot’s company Acoustic Image. Yarlung’s amplifiers grew from these designs and from this approach to sound.

Elliot joined Yarlung recording engineer Arian Jansen and me for our setup for this organ recording in Walt Disney Concert Hall. The three of us adjusted microphone positions, chose cables and set levels. While I was holding down as many keys on the organ as my hands and feet could depress to give us peak volumes, it was Elliot on his hands and knees on the stage floor adjusting the levels on his microphone preamps. We would make a small change in microphone placement and then have to adjust levels all over again.

When I am asked to describe the “Yarlung Sound,” I often talk about transparency. Our goal as engineers is to be like clean windows, through which an audience can see (or in our case hear) our musicians exactly as they sound in performance. But much as we like to pretend otherwise, everything in audio is an illusion. You have two or more speakers in your listening room with you, not Jung-A and the magnificent Walt Disney Concert Hall organ. And since your listening room is undoubtedly smaller than Walt Disney Concert Hall, we want to give you the feeling and visceral experience of sitting on this beautiful stage with us in this 2,265 seat acoustic marvel of an auditorium, with Jung-A at the organ console.

Depending on how various electronic components are designed, every one of them contributes a sound to the recording, and every one of them (microphones, cables, preamplifiers, analog and digital recorders) interacts with one another to complete the picture. No component is truly neutral or transparent, much as we like to maintain otherwise. We want the results of these components to feel neutral to you such that you hear the music as I hear it (and as I envision it) on stage during the recording. Elliot’s preamplifiers are one of the most important elements in this chain.

Elliot and I have been working on these designs for many years. He is the creator and designer. We listen together and I give him feedback and suggest directions we might take. Together, we have developed amplifiers that make us proud. These appreciative notes about Elliot Midwood are as good a place as any to mention that we have launched Yarlung Audio. We will begin with power amplifiers and follow with a preamplifier (both made in California) with bloodlines refined from our experience making these recordings. The power amplifiers are 100W Class A triode monoblocks. I used earlier versions of these power amplifiers at home, which Elliot and I built so I could hear every last detail in the recordings we make. They are extraordinarily revealing and powerful, with a firm grip on the speakers, yet extremely musical. They reproduce the nuances in a jazz trio or a Renaissance vocal ensemble with delicacy. But just wait until you hear them deliver Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 or the Dies irae in Verdi’s Requiem.

The preamplifier (which I have affectionately named “The Midwood”) uses circuits refined from our microphone preamplification, and includes a phonostage which is among the best I have ever heard. We anticipate a limited number of amplifiers and preamplifiers by Yarlung Audio will be available in 2019/20.

Elliot generously serves as executive producer for Yarlung’s DSD release of Jung-A Lee: A Private Organ Recital in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Elliot, thank you for your friendship, your talent, energy, patience and generosity: you make music such a pleasure. 

Thoughts on the repertoire

Woods and Brooks

Our album opens with Adam Knight Gilbert’s witty pastoral romp honoring Simon Woods and his family, written in Renaissance style from about 1518. Virtuosic as well as tongue-in-cheek, Adam’s piece uses the Renaissance technique of soggetto cavato, or “subjects carved from the vowels,” wherein the letters of a person’s name, or a word or phrase, are linked to Renaissance solfège to create the melodic line. Each letter is assigned to a specific pitch. In our case, Adam began with Simon Woods (mi sol ut ut sol sol) Karin Brookes (la mi sol sol re), their daughter Isabel (mi la re) and son Barnaby (la la mi). I loved the piece in rehearsal, and wanted more. Adam kindly added a slower middle section which he derived from Los Angeles Philharmonic (sol la re re mi fa sol mi). Great patrons of the arts (the Medici family in Florence comes to mind) often had pieces written for them in this way, and we thought it was fitting to appreciate our Los Angeles musical royalty similarly. Simon runs the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Karin Brookes serves as executive director of Early Music America. I am proud to say that Jung-A asked me to play the Pajaritos, the pedal that sounds like birds singing, which she added to the score with Adam’s permission. Woods and Brooks was commissioned by Yarlung Artists with generous underwriting from the Horton family.

The Swiss composer Guy Bovet’s Hamburger Totentanz follows next. Jung-A tells me that Mr. Bovet is as funny as he is talented as a composer. He was born in 1942 in Thun, near Bern, Switzerland. Hamburger Totentanz comes from Bovet’s Trois Préludes Hambourgeois, and Bovet manages to include quotations from Offenbach’s Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman, Beethoven’s Für Elise and the sailors’ chorus from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman as if the first two were not enough! The piece was first improvised in Hamburg, by Bovet and his friend the organist Hebert Wulf. They invented Hamburger Totentanz on the spot. Bovet liked what they improvised and later notated his own version of it for solo organ.

Jung-A and I chose Louis Vierne’s (1870-1937) Carrillon de Westminster to follow the Bovet. Not only is it a famous show piece for great organs like the one Manuel Rosales built for Walt Disney Concert Hall, but I have a personal memory of this piece that gives it a special glow. My teacher Ellen Louise Knoblach served as associate organist for the choir in which I sang for many years when I was in high school. For her final Sunday performance, she and Tom Foster chose this piece to be her farewell show piece. You may recognize the famous theme from the Westminster chimes one can hear from the clock tower in the Palace of Westmister in London.

François Couperin’s Elevation: Tierce en taille from Messe pour les couvents reveals the flexibility and multifaceted capacity of the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ. Couperin lived from 1668 to 1733. To my ears, this piece sounds as if Jung-A plays it on a Baroque instrument, including the articulation we associate with those instruments, not the monumental and powerful organ you hear in so much of this recital. Microphone positions and equipment remained the same. Of course, we owe credit for this to Jung-A’s musicality and technique every bit as much as to the organ’s versatility. Jung-A credits John Tuttle, her professor at the University of Toronto, for teaching her this piece as an undergraduate.

Diderich Buxtehude’s Ciacona in C Minor, BuxWV 159 takes me back to one of the earliest organ concerts I remember. My family was living in Denmark, about 6 KM west of Helsingør. We heard this piece in Buxtehude’s own church, on Buxtehude’s own organ (still in existence and recently restored to its original configuration) in the Mariæ Kirke attached to the Carmelite Monastery on Sct. Annagade in Helsingør. Buxtehude served as organist in this church in Helsingør from 1660 to 1668, before his appointment at Lübeck’s Marienkirche in Germany. (It was to Buxtehude’s church in Lübeck that J. S. Bach made his famous pilgrimage in 1705, essentially sneaking out of Arnstadt without permission from his patron. Bach walked more than 400 kilometers from Lübeck to hear the great Danish master and stayed in Lübeck for several months.)

Buxtehude was born in 1637 or 1639, and died in 1707. Hearing this magnificent and stately piece, it is easy to forget that the Chaconne was a “lurid dance” imported to Europe from the New World and banned by the church in Spain during the Inquisition. Dancing the Chaconne earned one 200 lashes. Jung-A first studied this Chaconne with James Christie at Boston University. Jung-A remembers that Professor Christie taught the articulation of Buxtehude and other earlier Baroque music convincingly. Jung-A learned this piece on the organ in Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, and has continued to develop her interpretation since.

We jump several centuries to the Dutch composer Ad Wammes, who was born in 1953 and wrote the scintillating Miroir in 1989. Jung-A writes that Wammes “uses a minimalist style in which the right hand repeats the same pattern from the beginning to the end of the work. I love the transparency and subtle evolving harmonic changes. I first heard this particular work in Los Angeles in the middle of an organ recital. While listening to it, I felt transported into a different realm as the sonority and dimmed lighting fit perfectly with the stained-glass windows surrounding us.”

Next follows Toccata written in 1968 by American composer and organist John Weaver, born in 1937. My fellow recording engineer Arian Jansen and I joked that this track demonstrates plenty of “Telarc Oomph.” Mr. Weaver taught at both Curtis and Juilliard, and now lives in Vermont. Jung-A often plays Weaver’s Toccata in G Major as her opening piece in a concert. She enjoys the fanfare style and triplet figuration throughout the work.

Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) bridges a gap for us between Adam Gilbert’s Renaissance-style Woods and Brooks and the Baroque era we celebrate with Buxtehude, Couperin and Bach. Famous for being the first composer to write a fugue for organ, Sweelinck wrote his famous variations on the tune Mein junges Leben hat ein End during his long tenure at Oude Kerk. Sweelinck was known during his lifetime as the “Orpheus of Amsterdam.” Jung-A reminisces about her 2017 performance of the piece in The Netherlands for organist Diane Bish and some friends on a Tulip Tour: “Playing at St. Stephen’s Church in Nijmegan with such wonderful acoustics was an unforgettable experience.”

Many scholars believe J. S. Bach (1685-1750) wrote his Prelude in B Minor, BWV 544 somewhere between 1727 and 1731 during his time at Thomaskirche in Leipzig, and this Prelude is considered one of his richest and most powerful. I listened to Jung-A perform this work from various places in Walt Disney Concert Hall. In every location, the organ sounded large and powerful, yet clear and surprisingly intimate and immediate. Kudos to Manuel Rosales and to Walt Disney Concert Hall architect Frank Gehry and acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota for making this possible. Jung-A knows many organists who want this particular organ piece to be played at their funerals. “I believe it can be associated with Bach’s B minor mass. This prelude is an excellent example of Bach’s mature work in the genre; I absolutely love it.”

We follow Bach’s Prelude with Yarlung’s commission from Jung-A Lee for her arrangement entitled Fantasia on Blessed Assurance, generously underwritten by Margie Barry in honor of Simon Woods and in happy memory of her husband David. This is the piece in our recording that most impresses our surround sound mastering engineer Tom Caulfield for its sheer power and magnificence. I can still see the rapt faces of our small audience during this recital and recording session. Jung-A wrote a winner, creating this Fantasia upon the hymn tune Blessed Assurance. The text for the hymn was written by the blind poet and prolific writer of hymn texts Frances Jane Crosby, who lived from 1820 to 1915.

Second to last in our program, Jung-A plays one of my favorites in the recital, Olivier Messiaen’s Les Anges, one of nine mediations on the birth of Our Lord, an early cycle Messiaen titled La Nativité du Seigneur. The composer wrote these works in 1935, when he was twenty seven years old, living in Grenoble. Messiaen employs what he interprets as Ancient Greek and Indian rhythms and meters. Messiaen was born in 1908 and died in 1992. The larger cycle La Nativité du Seigneur premiered in 1936 in La Trinité in Paris, shared among three players: Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, Jean Langlais, and Jean-Jacques Grünenwald. Jung-A often performs Les Mages, Les Berges, and Dieu parmi nous as well as Les Anges for concerts at Christmas time. Jung-A enjoys Messiaen’s unique harmonies and theological message and hopes these pieces will be performed more often in North America.

Jung-A ends our program with Dudley Buck’s Concert Variations on the Star Spangled Banner, Op. 23, a Romantic-era work published in 1868. Buck was born in Connecticut in 1839 and died in 1909. Buck defied his family, which anticipated he would enter the family shipping business, and instead studied in Leipzig, at the conservatory founded by Mendelssohn, where his love for and association with Bach’s music and compositional technique was kindled. Jung-A has performed this work in concert often, and it remains one of her audience favorites. Her grateful listeners often wind up in tears. Jung-A performs these variations almost every year on Memorial Day, Independence Day or on September 11th. Buck included a Minor section right before the Finale. Jung-A explains that the harmonic transition works so well that both the Minor section and Finale sections lift up our hearts. In our concert recording, nobody remained dry-eyed during the work’s thunderous conclusion.

Notes on the organ

Manuel Rosales keeps close tabs on the magnificent organ he conceived and voiced for Walt Disney Concert Hall. He never knows when some exciting performance or recording project will happen, so strives to keep the instrument in top shape. Nevertheless, Manuel and his team made sure everything worked flawlessly for us before and during Jung-A’s project. Jung-A is a special organist for Manuel and he wanted her to have a terrific experience. The Walt Disney organ itself occupies a unique place in Manuel’s heart, partly because this commission was such a controversy at the time. Organ builders are a conservative and sometimes cranky bunch, and Manuel remembers great antagonism from his colleagues over the project. He was warned that building the now-famous Walt Disney Concert Hall “French Fries” was supposed to be a career ender for the Rosales company. While the organ community often complains that nothing changes in the world of concert and church organs, and everything always looks the same, once the initial designs became public, Manuel was lambasted for a “satanic creation.” Think of Jung-A’s delightful Hamburger Totentanz when you read this. The success and popularity of this organ have vindicated Manuel’s vision that it was the right visual concept to compliment Frank Gehry’s architectural design.

The organ was a gift from Toyota Motor Sales USA, and includes 6,134 pipes ranging in size from 32 feet to a few inches. These pipes are in 109 ranks, or sets. Frank Gehry and Manuel Rosales collaborated on the visual design. Glatter-Götz Orgelbau in Owingen, Germany, and Rosales Organ Builders in Los Angeles created the mechanical design, construction, tuning and voicing. The organ was shipped from Germany in six ocean-going containers and the unassembled organ itself weighed over 40 metric tons. Installation by the Glatter-Götz staff in WDCH began in April 2003 and was completed in June 2003. Manuel and his Los Angeles team voiced the 6,134 pipes over a period of one year and completed the project in 2004.

The length of the longest pipes is over 32 feet and the largest pipe weighs over 1,000 lbs. The smallest pipe is the size of a small pencil with a speaking length less than 1/4” long. The lowest note has a frequency of 16 cycles per second, which is C below the lowest note on a modern Steinway. The highest note has a fundamental frequency of 10,548 cycles per second, which is an octave and a third higher than the top note of a piano.

The specially-curved wood façade pipes were made by Glatter-Götz Orgelbau of solid, vertical grain Douglas fir to match the interior of Walt Disney Concert Hall. The wood façade pipes are actual speaking pipes consisting of the 32’ Violone and 32’ Basson basses. Behind the façade are metal pipes, which are alloys of tin and lead. Other wood pipes were made in the workshops of Glatter-Götz Orgelbau of solid oak and solid pine. Metal pipes were made in various specialty workshops in Portugal, Germany, England and the United States. The main console is permanently attached at the base of the organ’s woodwork in the “forest of pipes,” at the base of what the detractors call the “French Fries.”   The stage console is moveable and can be plugged in at four different locations including back-stage for testing.

Wind for the organ is supplied by three blowers totaling 14.5 horsepower. Wind pressures range from 4” (102mm) for the Positive to 18” (380mm) for the Llamada horizontal “Tuba” and 32’ Contra Bombarde. The keys on the main console are connected to the pipe valves via a mechanical linkage known as “tracker action.” Both consoles are equipped with electric action, which may be digitally recorded for playback and archival purposes. The organ is equipped with MIDI interface for connection to digital systems, though our recording was very much a product of Jung-A’s directly-employed fingers, feet and skill.

Production notes

STEREO

 Arian Jansen and I used Ted Ancona’s famous “Frank Sinatra” AKG C-24 vacuum tube stereo microphone and two additional mid-hall Ted Ancona Schoeps M222 vacuum tube omnidirectional mono microphones. We used Elliot Midwood vacuum tube mic preamplification and fed these four tracks into our analog SonoruS Holographic Imaging processor. This SHI technology enabled us to produce a two channel mix to reproduce a more three-dimensional listening experience from two speakers. We captured this Holographic Imaging recording using a SonoruS ATR12 analog tape recorder, a SonoruS digital converter for high resolution PCM, and a Merging Technologies HAPI for DSD256. For more information about SonoruS Holographic Imaging please visit yarlungrecords.com/sonorus/

QUATRO SURROUND SOUND (4.0)
into 5 Channels for easy 5.0 and 5.1 playback

This is 4.0 surround sound mastered by NativeDSD’s hero Tom Caulfield, where channel 1 is left front, channel 2 is right front, channel 3 is silent, channel 4 is left rear and channel 5 is right rear for easy playback on standard 5.0 or 5.1 playback systems. We elected to use two front channels (not three) to preserve phase and playback room loading information in Walt Disney Concert Hall as accurately as possible. For the rear channels, we used our two mid-hall Ted Ancona Schoeps M222 vacuum tube microphones. Please visit yarlungrecords.com for links to our DSD 256fs downloads in stereo and surround sound.

COMPLETE TAKES

We believe that the musical intent communicated directly by our musicians is generally superior to a musical arc that I could create in postproduction, so we don’t edit. What you hear on this album is real. Jung-A performed this recital for our recording team and executive producer as you hear it.

Credits

Organ Builder and Technician: Manuel Rosales
Recording Engineers: Bob Attiyeh & Arian Jansen
Microphone Technician: David Bock
Vacuum Tube Microphones: Ancona Audio
Microphone Preamplification: Elliot Midwood
Stereo Mastering Engineers: Steve Hoffman & Bob Attiyeh
Surround Sound Mastering Engineer: Tom Caulfield
DSD Executive Producer: Elliot Midwood
Walt Disney Concert Hall production team: Dan Song, Jessie Farber, Leland Alexander
Organ construction photography for Manuel Rosales: Ron Bélanger
Jung-A Lee photography: Shuo Zhai

The post A Private Organ Recital by Jung-A Lee appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

This prompted me to try to go into the recording session without a frame of reference. Without any presumptions, and most of all open to all sonic and musical possibilities that might arise in the moment. Since these pieces were commissioned by the duo (Konstantyn and Eke), none of the pieces were ever recorded before. This left a huge amount of creative possibilities to explore during the recording process.

The recordings took place in the hot summer of 2018, at the beautiful Nationale Theater of The Hague, near the west coast of our beautiful little country The Netherlands. During the recording sessions of two of the four, we were joined by the composers themselves, who made sure the recording matched exactly with their intentions and visions for the piece. Firstly, we recorded Yannis Kyriakides’ piece “Once There Was”, a suite of pieces based on traditional nursery rhymes. Many of these rhymes have dark and historically significant themes yet are used to foster emotion and cultivate language. In some cases, these rhymes were censored, to mask the political message that lie within. The composition is made for piano, percussion and electronics, so a mix had to be made of the two acoustic instruments and the electronic instrument. Together with Yannis, we found the right mix and started the recording.

The next day, we recorded Jan-Peter de Graaff’s piece “The Bells of St. Clement’s”, also together with the composer himself. The piece, based on the nursery rhyme of “Oranges and Lemons (say the bells of St. Clement’s)”, has a huge dynamic range, but with very important little details hidden in the dynamically softest places of it. This proved a true test for our Sonodore microphones and Merging Technologies preamps and converters, but they came through with flying colors. Without the details disappearing in the noise floor of the signal, yet with all dynamics captured through to life, I was thankful to be working with this equipment. Honestly, I don’t think it would’ve been possible with other microphones or converters.

The third day was likely the heaviest for the duo. After two intense days of recording these very involving pieces, they still had to record the longest of the four, namely “The Collectors” by German composer Moritz Eggert. Also written for the duo but including a huge ton of various small instruments that the duo had to perform on whilst still playing their “own” instrument. These little instruments varied from a toy piano to kazoos, moo-boxes (yes, this is a thing!), groan sticks (look it up!), and all sorts of different cymbals and other percussion instruments that Eke, the pianist had to play. It was actually great fun to record it, to try to read along the scores as quickly as possible with all these instruments, all the while keep on listening to the music that was performed and taking notes. Great stuff, and I’m really happy the way it turned out. The piece is just over 27 minutes long, and it’s the most fun you could have with just two instruments.

Lastly, we recorded the explosive and theatrical short piece “Shameless” by Australian composer Samuel Penderbayne. In this piece, the musicians have to yell, wave, speak, shout, and perform all kinds of interesting stunts while still playing very precisely these amazingly virtuosic parts.

After the recording, I had the pleasure of doing almost all of the editing together with the artists, with constant feedback from the composers. It’s such a great thing to work like this – at TRPTK, we’re always focused on giving the artist a stage to bring out themselves through their own music, and what’s more personal than actually being there when the editing and mastering together with the artists and composers?

All in all, we had such a great time recording, editing and mastering this album. It’s truly a collectors item in our regards, and a testament to what can be done with just two instruments. You could say, we had an absolute blast recording it.

The post The Collectors by Konstantyn Napolov & Eke Simons appeared first on NativeDSD Music.

Schoenberg fled Vienna in 1934, four years before my grandparents escaped. So, as a young artist, nowhere in my imagination was the possibility of duality and contradiction made more manifest than in the history of that city. A culture that gave birth to some of the greatest achievements in the artform that I had chosen to pursue could, in the same breath, harbor sentiments and sanction behavior antithetical to music’s transcendent promise.

(..) I knew I had found the ideal partners for an album of this scope and intensity”

It might be fitting then, in the spirit of grappling with these odd realities, that this album was conceived in the most “un-Viennese” location: the sweeping white landscapes and rugged fjords of northern Norway. In late April, patches of frozen snow surrounded an 11th century church where I spent twenty-one hours rehearsing and recording these three pieces with the Trondheim Soloists. Although all three had long occupied the back of my mind as potential recording projects, it wasn’t until last September, when I first had the opportunity to collaborate with these artists, that I knew I had found the ideal partners for an album of this scope and intensity.I always considered the chamber music setting as my native environment, and the small orchestra intimacy of the Haydn concerti along with the dynamic range of the Schoenberg allowed the session to feel both big and small. This, coupled with the personal relationship I developed with my artistic partners, made for a uniquely intimate experience. I believe this comes through in the performances that I am thrilled to be sharing with you here.

As the final note decayed in the rounded echo of that old church, everything was completely still and everyone completely silent.”

While recording Verklärte Nacht, at the end of a day spent working through details, we concluded with one final concert play-through – a tradition where the fatigue of a long session often outstrips artistic goals. This time, however, it was the most vibrant and focused rendition of the whole afternoon. As the final note decayed in the rounded echo of that old church, everything was completely still and everyone completely silent.

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Dear friends,

George Klissarov generously sponsored Yarlung’s first DSD releases. His Canadian company, exaSound, makes superb DACs that many of us in the NativeDSD community know and love. They vary from compact units that connect via usb cables to full-on music servers. I use two of these DACs myself. George and I talked about Ciaramella Ensemble several years ago, and he wanted very much that these recordings come out in DSD following the album’s success on vinyl and on compact disc. I promised this would happen, and thankfully, George didn’t pressure me for a release date.

Ciaramella Ensemble recorded this album with me in Alfred Newman Hall on the campus of the University of Southern California in June, 2011. Every track is a single take. No editing. This is one of Yarlung’s classic “super simple” recordings. We used one AKG C24 stereo microphone, microphone amplification by Elliot Midwood, and analog tape vacuum tube recording circuitry designed for me by Len Horowitz. To make these DSD files for you, we played the tapes on the SonoruS ATR10 into my trusty Hapi from Merging Technologies, recording at 256fs.

Ciaramella’s original members met as graduate students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. They first performed together on Christmas Day in 2003 and have since performed in concert halls and in music festivals on three continents. Adam and Rotem Gilbert co-direct the ensemble, and both teach Renaissance and Baroque music at the Thornton School at the University of Southern California.

Officially based in Los Angeles for a few years now, Ciaramella has taken on everything local, from earthquakes to myriad early music performances in Southern California. This is dance music, so jazz fans and lovers of the Polka or Rock and Roll should not be surprised if they wind up tapping their feet. Our species has been dancing for more centuries than we have been using speech. For those of you more specifically interested in early music, here are some of the juicier details for you:

Instruments

The instruments Ciaramella uses are copied from original instruments still extant, or recreated from paintings and treatises. In some instances these new instruments come from research into the shapes and sizes of still existing instrument cases for instruments long missing. Ciaramella used 1/4-comma meantone and tuned to A=465 and A=415.

To the modern concertgoer, shawms remain among the least familiar of early instruments. Ciaramella,” the Italian word for “shawm,” originated in the Greek and Latin words for “reed” (“kalamos” and calamus” respectively). Today’s oboe is a modern version of the shawm. Like the oboe, the shawm is a double reed instrument (higher and louder than the modern oboe) with finger holes instead of keys, and a flared bell.

The modern trombone, or “big trumpet” in Italian, originates in two fifteenth-century instruments, the slide trumpet and the sackbut. In the case of the slide trumpet, the whole instrument moves up and down along the mouthpiece tube, thus altering the pitch. The sackbut has a fixed mouthpiece tube, and adjusts its pitch like the modern trombone, with a slide that changes the length of two tubes joined by the slide on the far side of the instrument from the mouthpiece. In fact, the sackbut is an instrument designed more like its modern descendent than many others. Indeed, a modern trombonist can play a sackbut with only moderate adjustments for embouchure and breath support.

The Renaissance recorder has a wider bore than its Baroque counterpart (which has remained virtually unchanged since Bach’s day). With its tuning and more limited range, it would not function well in the Brandenburg Concertos, but its bore contributes to the distinctive sound of its fatter low register and the complex overtones throughout its range. When listening to takes of this album with Michala Petri, she exclaimed “Wow! That is such a really wonderful tone. And Bob, do you know how hard it is to play these earlier instruments in tune? Adam and Rotem do a great job.” Incidentally, you can hear Michala on multiple recordings released by NativeDSD.

Ciaramella’s Flemish bagpipes differ from modern Scottish Highland bagpipes. The chanter, the pipe with the fingering, closely resembles the chanter from Scotland, and both instruments use the same type of reed. But the Flemish bagpipe has only one drone, as you will hear in Sardanas, or in the duet between Adam Gilbert on bagpipe and Arthur Omura playing the hurdy gurdy in our medley of La Mantovana, Bobbing Joe and Auprès de ma blonde on track 19.

Paul Beekhuizen made Ciaramella’s Flemish bagpipe in G based on Pieter Bruegel’s engraving The Fat Kitchen. Joel Robinson built the bagpipe in A after Pieter Bruegel’s painting The Peasant Dance. The hurdy gurdy is an original nineteenth-century instrument made in the Baroque style, from the collection of Curtis Berak.

Hope you enjoy!

Ciaramella Ensemble
Adam Knight Gilbert and Rotem Gilbert, directors
Adam Knight Gilbert, shawm, recorder, bagpipe
Rotem Gilbert, shawm, recorder
Doug Milliken, shawm, recorder, bagpipe, dulcian
Aki Nishiguchi, shawm, recorder
Greg lngles, sackbut
Erik Schmalz, sackbut
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, viola da gamba
Jason Yoshida, guitar, theorbo
Arthur Omura, harpsichord, hurdy gurdy
Jose Gurria-Cardenas, percussion

Instruments used in this recording
Treble shawm by Paul Hailperin (2005)
Treble shawm by Bernard Schermer (2000)
Alto shawms by Bob Cronin (2003)
Sackbuts by Rainer Egger (2001, 2002)
Dulcian by Martin Praetorius (2005)
Bagpipe in A by Joel Robinson (2003)
Bagpipe in G by Paul Beekhuizen (1997)
Recorder consort by Bob Marvin (1996, 1999)
Baroque guitar after Antonio Stradivarius by Jack Sanders (2005)
Theorbo by Robert Meadows (1986)
Viola da gamba by Werner Trojer (2010)
Harpsichord by David Way (1986)
Percussion instruments: Brazilian pandeiro, Peruvian cajon, tenor frame drum,caxixis, and guiro Hurdy gurdy
Tuning: A=465; A=415 Temperament: 1/4-comma meantone

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