May is a Busy Time of Year

For me, May brings the triple crown of conferences/meetings: ARSC, AES, and the Recording Academy on top of my usual mastering, restoration and preservation work. Fair warning: I have poured a glass of wine and am procrastinating working on a highly challenging but utterly beautiful record in order to write this.

I joined Rich Martin (Archeophone), Bryan Hoffa (Library of Congress) and Seth Winner to teach a workshop on Digital Restoration in the 21st Century for the Association of Recorded Sound Collections annual conference. I love that we have to specify 21st century. I had to clarify to attendees that I frequently restore recordings made in the 1990s, not 1890s, as some of my colleagues specialize in the pre-electrical era of recorded music.

For the AES 150th, I offered my take on audio preservation outside of major institutions for a panel put together by Nadja Wallaszkovits. I also had a deeply moving conversation on mentoring with fellow mastering engineers and friends Piper Payne, Anna Frick, Maria Rice and Margaret Luthar.

Exciting news on the mastering front! I am thrilled to be a longtime part of the Erroll Garner preservation team, and we will all be popping the champagne to celebrate Erroll’s Centennial this year with 3 New Releases from Octave Music & Mack Avenue Music Group, including a never-before-heard sold out concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall in 1959. This exquisite collection includes the 12 LPs from the Octave Remastered series plus the Symphony Hall concert and Erroll’s last performance at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago. I shared the mastering duties with Osiris Studio’s Michael Graves. This box set was produced by Peter Lockhart and Steve Rosenthal and has expansive liner notes written by Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley, Terri Lyne Carrington and Cécile McLorin Salvant. A truly glorious career-spanning collection of music that will redefine Erroll’s legacy as a jazz pianist.

A few more mastering projects…

The Return Of… Pachyman drops this summer on ATO, but you can hear the first single and pre-order now.

DJ Black Low’s amapiano banger Uwami is out now on Awesome Tapes From Africa, but Bandcamp says the vinyl already sold out.

Hailu Mergia is releasing a reissue of an incredibly rare cassette only release from 1975, Tezeta. Pitchfork had some nice things to say about it.

Here’s a red hot single from Life In Sweatpants, Good 2 Yourself.

And a modern exotica record that requires a cocktail, This Is Vintage Now, Vol. 2.

Finally, I spoke with Geoff Stanfield for the Tape Op podcast DISCussion about my love for Scott Walker’s Scott 3, a cracked doorway from early heartthrob Scott to later avant-garde noisy Scott. My dream is to sit alone in a velvet banquette on my second martini and listen to Scott sing to a half empty room.