You've found some success recording in the classical world.
It's becoming my niche. I went to a summit in Nashville in November, and I was there as the token one young classical person. They were like, "We need the odd duck to balance this out." It's a funny, weird, little insular world. Forever, it was three old dudes sitting in a room saying, "This year we will make five records with this orchestra, five records with this pianist, and that's what we will release." Now, the label system is adrift, especially in the classical world. There are a lot of these smaller players: PARMA [Recordings], Bridge [Records], and Delos [Productions]. They're doing a lot of great work, but it's not so A&R-driven anymore. It's more artists going out, picking their rep, and then deciding, "It's time to make a record." So, it means there are a lot more of us random engineers popping up and filling in the gap where we can.
Did you grow up on classical music?
Not even close. My family is not musical at all. I come from a family of pilots. I am forever a disappointment, because I don't want to learn to fly! [laughter] I grew up wanting to learn to play the violin, but my parents said, "You have to take a couple of years of piano first because it's cheaper and easier." We had a piano at home. I took a couple of years of piano, and then they asked, "Are you ready to switch?” I said, "I have to fucking tune this thing. I'm not tuning my own instrument," so I stayed with the piano. I was dabbling back and forth between learning to improvise, while also studying classical piano. I had a couple weird little stints playing in some big bands as a teenager. I oddly ended up in audio because I wanted to get a piano degree. My piano teacher called me before my audition at The Hartt School in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where I ended up going for undergrad. He said, "I don't think you're good enough to get in for piano performance, but you have good SAT scores. Maybe you should try to get in for engineering and take piano lessons on the side." I put in for audio engineering and the interview went well. They said, "You can do a double major if you can figure out the credits." I got shoehorned into audio, and this is so much more fun than playing the piano! I'm not isolated for six to eight hours a day. I don't have to be extroverted, but I don't have to be alone. The classical thing happened because I could read scores. If you're a pianist, you're used to reading more than one line of music at a time. Being able to read orchestra or opera score, you have no other choice. The opportunities kept coming. I still dabble. I do singer/songwriter and acoustic pop music, but 80 to 90 percent of what I do is classical now.
What did you grow up listening to?
I mostly grew up in rural Arkansas, listening to country music and classic rock. I was not a kid who walked into a conservatory being able to name off my Köchel numbers – the Mozart cataloging system.
I assume that's not an expectation for your job.
Previously, there was an expectation that sound technicians were often classical musicians who were able to hit some buttons and push some faders. One of my closest mentors, Tim Martyn, was a Juilliard pianist. He puts me to shame. When we work together, mostly on the New Jersey Symphony, it's humbling for sure.
How did you end up in Connecticut from Arkansas?
I was looking to get out of Arkansas. I was looking to be closer to some of the bigger East Coast cities. So, I applied to Berklee [School of Music] in Boston. I applied to NYU and Hartt. Hartford was a great spot; it's three hours to New York or Boston. I could pop out and see and hear different music and stay busy. Moving from a farm in Arkansas to New York City would have been incredibly overwhelming. It ended up being the right place, at the right time.
Is Hartt a conservatory? Is it a university? Is it both?
It used to be a conservatory, the Hartt School. Then it was absorbed into the University of Hartford; a conservatory within this larger university. For audio, you end up bouncing over into some university electronics and math. They have one of the best acoustics programs in the country. That was fun to get to do a semester of acoustics and walk into an anechoic chamber. The whole concept of that undergrad program was learning how to be a performer, even if you're not a performance major, while also doing all the audio on the side.
Do other classical engineers come out of that program?
There have been a few. When I was there, it was run by Justin Kurtz who still teaches there. He's a wonderful teacher. There are a couple other teachers who are more into rock and pop styles. More rock engineers should know how to read music and communicate clearly musically. I've done some rock records, and I love pop music.
It's nice to have some basic sight reading.
It's funny, because some of the old-school guys can't read scores. It’s a crazy range where we have Juilliard guys and these guys. When we send them edits, we have to send them with timecode because they can't read the score. Now, it's expected that you can at least read through a vocal score or such. I'm working on something right now that's these crazy études, and it's super fast. To make some of these edits, I'm playing it back at 50 percent and thinking, "Did I lose the 16th note?"
