Michael Bishop, left, and Elaine Martone of Transmigration hold their awards for best surround sound album backstage at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2010, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
UPDATE: Jan. 31, 2010
As of this afternoon, we've won another Grammy for Best Surround Sound Album.
Best Surround Sound Album “Transmigration” Michael Bishop, surround mix engineer; Michael Bishop, surround mastering engineer; Elaine Martone, surround producer (Robert Spano, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Choruses) [Telarc]
More details later tonight after we've finished calculating how many we have now.
Five/Four Productions, Ltd. is an independent audio production team based in Cleveland, Ohio. Michael
Bishop, Robert Friedrich, and Thomas Moore, all former key production members of Telarc Records, created a
unique team of audio specialists with Grammy®-winning experience across multiple music genres. Largely
responsible for continuing the “Telarc Sound” over the past twenty years, the Five/Four Productions team
members represent today’s Best of the Best in audio production and technical innovation. Bringing unparalleled
music industry experience, Five/Four Productions' work is available to artists, labels and projects worldwide.
Recent Five/Four Productions recordings include projects with Franz Welzer Möst and The Cleveland
Orchestra, Caroline Goulding, Hiromi, Eric Bibb, Michael Maniaci, Martin Perlman and Boston Baroque,
Garrick Ohlsson, Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Christine Brewer, Eric Owen,
Jennifer Higdon, Christopher Theofanidis, John Adams, Jennifer Koh, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, David
Amado and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, Michael Stern and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Time
For Three, Trisha O'Brien, Cameron Carpenter, Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Grant
Dermody, Gaetano Letizia, Yolanda Kondonassis, Jahja Ling and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Ben
Zander and Philharmonia Orchestra, and Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
# # #
Grammy® is a trademark of The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.
JOHN ADAMS: On the Transmigration of Souls; Barber: Adagio for Strings; Agnus Dei; CORIGLIANO: Elegy; JENNIFER HIGDON: Dooryard Bloom – Nmon Ford, baritone/ Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Choruses/ Gwinnett Young Singers/ Robert Spano, conductor – Telarc
Superb music recorded with great skill, a mandatory purchase!
ADAMS: On the Transmigration of Souls; Barber: Adagio for Strings; Agnus Dei; CORIGLIANO: Elegy; JENNIFER HIGDON: Dooryard Bloom – Nmon Ford, baritone/ Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Choruses/ Gwinnett Young Singers/ Robert Spano, conductor – Telarc 80673, 72:29 ****1/2:
This is a great album, make no mistake. The reason for my ½ star of hesitancy is because I still wish that the thing was released on SACD. Telarc’s website says “one format” meaning (in their case) regular CD downsampled from DSD masters, but they have often then been releasing some months later in SACD surround format. [This just in from Telarc: they ARE releasing it on SACD - the Concord Music web site was just misinformed. That's encouraging, since Telarc has been such a shining example in SACD releases..Ed.]
What we have is fabulous, and the sound is still excellent. I wonder if many listeners out there realize what a disaster Symphony Hall in Atlanta is. The acoustics are abysmal, and there are plans for a new hall that are progressing at the speed of molasses. But Telarc has learned how to get around the terrible sound in the place [as they used to do with the San Francisco Symphony's venue...Ed.], and you would never have guessed, having heard the orchestra live, that the recording was made there. The orchestra sounds as good as ever, the strings particularly showing vast improvement
Both of the Barber works have been recorded by Telarc before, the Adagio on an all-Barber disc by Yoel Levi some years ago that got great reviews and is still one of he best available. The Agnus Dei was set down by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers. Both performances are excellent, but since these two works serve as bookends to this recital it does little good to compare them. The new ones are also very fine, Spano’s Adagio being a little more expansive than Levi’s and this time a much bigger choir than Shaw’s Festival Singers.
The John Adams has already had a triple award Grammy winner in the Nonesuch recording, so it takes a little bit of chutzpah to record it again. But this version is in my opinion better than the Nonesuch because the choral work is so much more refined and dramatic, though the Nonesuch remains a superb reading and I doubt this one will top it critically, except by me. It is a powerful work of great substance of memory and regret, and should be heard by anyone who was impacted by 9/11, meaning everyone. There is more music on this disc, so if you have not heard the piece this is the one to get.
John Corigliano’s Elegy is an early 1966 work that expressed sorrow over lost youth, in this case Helen of Troy, based on a piece he had written for an off-Broadway production of Wallace Ford’s Helen. The work, dedicated to mentor Samuel Barber, is very much in the Copland/Barber/Bernstein neo-romantic mode of the time.
Jennifer Higdon is in my assessment one of greatest of the newer composers, already lionized on many recordings, including the Atlanta Symphony, who recorded her Concerto for Orchestra, the piece that launched her career in Philadelphia in 2002. This work, scored for orchestra and baritone, is based on Walt Whitman’s When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d. It is an amazing contrapuntal delight that strikes just the right mood of Whitman’s poem, exploring tonal ranges that I have not heard in her music before, with an amazing transparency in the vocal part that integrates seamlessly with the orchestra. This piece, premiered in 2005 by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is the finest I have heard by her to date, and may even—if one can be so bold—equal the parallel work by Paul Hindemith, also recorded with excellence by Shaw and the ASO some years back, and still the best version of the piece.
So this is a complete winner by any set of standards; not something I’d put on at a party, but certainly something designed for reflection and quietude - just downright worthwhile and inspiring music.
-- Steven Ritter
Copyright 2009 Audiophile Audition
Michael Cameron of Fanfare magazine on Five/Four's recording of Transmigration (Telarc).
(c) 2009 Fanfare magazine, September-October 2009 issue. Reprinted by permission from the publisher.
collections: Orchestral
Transmigration Robert Spano, cond; Nmon Ford (bar);1 Atlanta SO2 & Ch;3 Atlanta SO CCh;4 Gwinnett Young Singers5 TELARC 80673 (71:06)
ADAMS On the Transmigration of Souls.1,2,3,5 HIGDONDooryard Bloom.1,2CORIGLIANO Elegy.2BARBERAdagio for Strings.2 Agnus Dei4
I’ve heard my share of thematically organized recording projects that seem conceptually forced, whatever other attributes they exhibit. Not so with this disc, which excels in every conceivable way. The theme is carefully and consistently maintained with a roster of high quality works by American composers, the performances by Robert Spano and the ASO are spotlessly and thoughtfully realized, and the recorded sound should easily meet audiophiles’ highest standards.
The disc title derives from John Adams’ landmark On the Transmigration of Souls. The other works also respond to grief at some level, although the opener, Barber’s Adagio for Strings, hasn’t always worn its elegiac associations so indisputably. Spano’s opening bars suggest a slowish reading, but the pacing overall is sensible, far quicker than Bernstein’s famously sluggish traversal and the recent live performances of podium phenom Gustavo Dudamel. The ASO’s strings are marvelously transparent and precisely balanced, and if his tempos aren’t extreme, Spano coaxes a wide dynamic range from his forces, especially in the gloriously hushed closing bars. There are more intensely raw accounts of the chestnut, but this surely ranks among the more completely absorbing.
Just as Barber transferred the Adagio from string quartet to string orchestra, he later re-worked it for choral forces in the Agnus Dei, incorporating the four short lines from the mass. Spano shaves over a minute off his string version, no doubt a concession to his singers’ lung capacity. The ASO chorus has lost none of its legendary clarity and luster, and their angelic performance is almost reason enough to own the disc.
Adams’ The Transmigration of Souls from 2002 is the most durable and conspicuous musical monument to the terrorist attacks, and garnered waves of recognition, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize and a rare trifecta at the Grammy awards. It is also one of the finest American works of the last decade, adding considerable weight to Adams’ argument that new music has an obligation to maintain a relevance to current events, an uncontroversial postulate in the other arts, but oddly suspect among some in our world of “serious” music. It has been correctly remarked that the trumpet solo from Ives’ Unanswered Question makes an oblique, non-literal appearance a few minutes into the 25-minute tone poem, certainly an apt reference, given the subject matter. But I also hear other, more subtle references to the American icon, including some linear and texturally layered sections during which time seems temporarily suspended. It may be coincidental, but Adams had been conducting Ives’ Fourth Symphony not long before his work on this composition. A more notable departure from his standard practice is the use of prerecorded text that includes disembodied voices and ambient city sounds, adding still another stratum to an assemblage that includes orchestra, chorus, and children’s chorus. His language is tonally more ambiguous than most of his earlier works, and dissonances are a bit more prevalent. Other than a few climactic moments about two-thirds through the piece, his minimalist roots play a minimal role.
If you don’t own a disc of the work (shame on you!) and are comparing this version to the original New York Philharmonic/Maazel reading, consider these frank remarks from the composer’s recent memoir (Hallelujah Junction—Composing an American Life), in which his opinion of the work rose considerably after hearing Spano and the ASO: “[T]he piece did not seem as compromised and uneven as I had previously thought.” There are certainly no obvious faults in the debut recording on Nonesuch, but Spano has woven the disparate elements together more seamlessly, the chorus is peerless, and the recorded sound is appreciably better than the serviceable live recording in Avery Fisher Hall.
The other large work on the disc is Jennifer Higdon’s Dooryard Bloom, taken from her adaptation of Walt Whitman’s poem “When Lilacs last in Dooryard Bloom’d,” a lamentation on Lincoln’s death (though his name is not mentioned) and a common source of musical settings. Higdon’s 2005 piece is scored for baritone and orchestra, sung here by the Nmon Ford. The singer gets to the heart of the mournful texts with a warm, soothing, and ardent delivery. Unlike the fragmented texts in Adams work, Higdon spins a real-time delivery of the poem, paced not dissimilarly from a spoken recitation. Textures are relatively spare, giving ample space for clear declamation from the voice. The musical language ranges from a soothing, clear-eyed Americana (alluding perhaps to Copland’s Lincoln Portrait) to more ambiguous tonal wanderings and misty atmospherics that mirror the shifting moods of the text. It’s an engaging work, though it succeeds better as a vehicle for a landmark poem than a musical masterpiece.
If Adams moves out of his comfort zone, John Corigliano’s Elegy comes from a less risky era of his career. This is no doubt due to two factors: the early date of its genesis (1965, while he was still firmly under the spell of the American Romanticists) and its history as an excerpt of instrumental music for Wallace Fry’s play Helen. He is under Copland’s spell here; that is, the portentous and mildly combative Copland more than the lyrical one, though in the notes he mentions the effect of Barber, Piston, and William Schuman (for the record, I detect nary a hint of Piston). By turns, the eight-minute work is soothing and soaring, easily achieving its modest aims—an impressive first orchestral work for the young composer.
I rarely describe a disc as “must have,” but this time I’ll make an exception. I suppose there may be some who would object to the consistently slow tempos and cheerless mood as disqualifying factors, but if they do, they are ignoring a key aspect of music’s ability to move souls. Loss is part of life, and this lovingly conceived project makes that point clearer than any other I have heard. Michael Cameron
BEACHWOOD — Telarc International, the award-winning Beachwood recording company, will cut half its 52 employees and stop producing its own recordings, the outgoing president said Tuesday.
Robert Woods, Telarc's founder and president, said he will leave in March. That's when Concord Music Group of Beverly Hills, Calif., which bought the label in 2005, changes the company's course to one of outsourcing music production.
Woods said some workers already have received their termination notices. Others, like him, will leave in March, and the rest will be gone by mid-year. The company will shrink to 26 employees.
Woods and his wife, Elaine Martone, plan to set up a production operation managing classical music artists and producing their recordings. Their first music label client will be Telarc, he said, though the company will eventually court other labels, too.
Michael Bishop, Telarc's former chief recording engineer, is doing something similar. With partners, he launched Five/Four Productions to do high-quality audio recordings for CDs and a range of other music media, including downloadable audio, cinema sound tracks, multimedia experiences and video performances.
For now, both production companies will keep offices and work space at Telarc's headquarters in Commerce Park.
Woods' replacement as Telarc president will be Dave Love, who has been in charge of HeadsUp, a label Telarc bought in 2000.
Concord's plan is to turn the company's three divisions -- Telarc, HeadsUp and Concord -- into record labels whose products it would market and distribute. Historically, Telarc planned, recorded and produced all the music that went on its CDs. In the future, the company will rely on outsourced production to do those tasks and deliver master tapes to the record company.
For the most part, CDs probably will continue to be manufactured and packaged at a Sony facility in Terre Haute, Ind.
Telarc's three labels have released recordings that, with some overlap, encompassed a range of musical genres:
• Telarc began in the early 1970s as a classical music label. Its first commercial release was called "Direct from Cleveland" and was of former conductor Loren Maazel and the Cleveland Orchestra. It later branched out into jazz and blues as well.
• HeadsUp includes smooth jazz, blues and what musicians calls "straight-ahead jazz," sometimes more challenging music.
• The Concord label releases jazz recordings and also what Bishop called "some pop, especially legacy artists like Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney." All the labels, he said, share the approach of music for adults.
Over the years, Telarc and its other labels have won numerous Grammys, the top awards in the recorded music industry. Telarc won two Grammys this year and three last year.
Woods and Bishop said they leave Telarc with some sadness, but both value their involvement with what Bishop called "the extremely high-quality production values" they instilled in every project during their almost four decades there.
But, Woods, noted, the record industry is changing.
"The handwriting has been on the wall for some time," he said. " ... We had the last production team standing."
Burton Twp. man continues to reel in awards with area recording company
Wednesday, December 10, 2008 1:23 AM EST
By Betsy Scott
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Music was still only available on vinyl when Michael Bishop was first turned onto it.
As a child growing up in Chardon, he recalls being fascinated by the sounds coming out of the turntable.
"I had always been interested in how recordings sounded and wondered how they were made, from probably 5 or 6 years old," the 57-year-old BurtonTownship resident said. "That got my curiosity going about how sound was recorded on a record. I would hear a lot of aspects other than music."
About 50 years and seven Grammys later, his keen ear is still in tune with what it takes to make a melodious recording.
As chief recording engineer with Telarc International records in Beachwood, he is up for two more individual Grammys — Best Surround Album and Best Engineered Classical Album — the winners of which will be announced in February.
"Just to get to the nomination part of the process for the Grammy awards, your entry has to get through a list of tens of thousands of entries," Bishop said. "There you are with four other nominees in your category. That's quite an honor and quite a place to be."
So how does one stay humble when rubbing elbows in the recording studio with the likes of Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt and jazz great Oscar Peterson?
"You live in Burton," he said laughing. "We're not in the hub of the entertainment business, that's for sure, and I'm very happy we're not. This is a much, much better place to raise a family, here in GeaugaCounty. I had the opportunity back in the 1970s to go into the recording business in Los Angeles. ... Maybe I missed a good opportunity, who knows, but I know my family is much better off for it, and therefore I am."
His wife, Wendy, and grown daughters, Amber and Brianna, have been able to join him on some recording jobs, and those are among his top memories in the business.
"There have been a lot of moments like that. There are plenty of times I've been in a recording session and I'm thinking, 'Wow, somebody's paying me to do this.' "
So how does a kid from rural Geauga end up a top recording executive?
Bishop's beginnings were humble enough. As a teen, he and a friend created a makeshift studio in his friend's barn on South Street in Chardon. The best of the local bands came to record in exchange for a free copy. He soon was recording well-known homegrown acts at a Mentor dance club, including Eric Carmen, The Choir and Glenn Schwartz, guitarist for the James Gang before Joe Walsh.
After graduating from Chardon High in 1969, he briefly tried to pursue his passion at KentStateUniversity, but no such institutions offered recording programs back then.
He spent some time at loose ends before landing a job with Clair Brothers Audio in Lancaster, Pa., which provided sound reinforcement for major concerts. His first gig was for Elton John, and he later worked on a Johnny Cash tour.
He discovered live sound wasn't what he was looking for and ended up back in Chardon.
Soon after, he went to work for the former Cleveland Recording Co., the major recording studio in the area.
The wide variety of genres — from commercial jingles to rock — provided a solid foundation for his current job with Telarc, which primarily deals in classical, jazz and blues.
He started freelancing for Telarc in 1978 and came aboard full time a decade later.
The job has provided him plenty of opportunity for travel and walks on the red carpet at Grammy time, but he said he much prefers to be at home with his wife and his horses, practicing for team penning competitions.
He recently brought some good PR to his hometown when he arranged for blues recording artist Eric Bibb to use a historic building at CenturyVillage, on Burton Village Square.
He often gets asked for advice on how to break into his field.
"Learn everything you can about music, electronics, computers, and be extremely versatile," he said.
"There are many opportunities outside of the music business that involve audio recording."
He said there are good programs at some Cleveland institutions, and at LakelandCommunity College in Kirtland.
By Betsy Scott
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Ask award-winning recording engineer Michael Bishop if adding to his trophies ever gets old and you'll get an emphatic answer.
"Never," he said Monday, the day after garnering another Grammy at the 51st annual event. "It's as thrilling as can be and still just as nerve-wracking while you're waiting to find out."
Bishop, 56, of BurtonTownship, served as engineer on the Best Surround Sound Album for the Telarc Super Audio CD release "Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition; Night On Bald Mountain; and Prelude To Khovanshchina." It was his eighth Grammy Award.
Bishop said he has been working on surround recording techniques for 40 years.
"So it's great to have this sort of Grammy recognition for something I've worked on so long. Within the industry, I'm considered one of the surround pioneers, but this was my first for surround in Grammys," he said.
"It was a doubly pleasing win because we beat out a Ringo Starr surround project," he added.
Bishop didn't attend the awards ceremony because he was in Atlanta to work on a recording of Strauss arias with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
He watched the show online from a hotel room. Co-winner Robert Woods, who produced the Mussorgsky project, accepted the award, which was given during the pre-telecast portion of the show.
Bishop is recording engineer and producer for Five/Four Productions, which he formed in December with three others from Beachwood-based Telarc Records.
original at http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2009/02/03/news/nh437504.txt
Geauga man helps create production company
Tuesday, February 3, 2009 11:45 PM EST
By Betsy Scott
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When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
So says the old adage, and one local optimist has taken it to heart.
In December, Grammy-winningBurtonTownship resident Michael Bishop and 26
others at Telarc Records learned they would lose their jobs, effective March
31. The cuts were the result of restructuring by Beverly Hills-based Concord
Music Group, which bought Beachwood-based Telarc three years ago.
Concord is
changing its business model to outsource the production functions that have
been done in-house for the last 30 years, Bishop said. But he isn't bitter.
In fact, he and three other co-workers took the opportunity to create their own
company — Five/Four Productions, which is taking on work from Concord and anyone else looking for
top-of-the-line recordings.
"It frees us up to do many projects we wouldn't have been able to do
before," said Bishop, who was chief recording engineer for Telarc.
Five/Four Productions commenced operation last month by recording a project
with Franz Welzer-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra for Deutsche Gramophone, a
competitor of Telarc. The group has a number of other gigs lined up, involving
orchestras from around the country.
Five/Four also will help meet production needs for outsourced Telarc and Concord projects.
"While this isn't a situation we would have chosen, we are very happy we
have a good working relationship with Concord Music Group, and we're looking
forward to helping to make both our businesses successes," Bishop said.
"We're making the world's best lemonade."
Along with Bishop, the fledgling company is composed of Bill
McKinney of Middlefield, Robert
Friedrich of Beachwood and Thomas
Moore of Shaker Heights, all former key production members of
Telarc Records and audio specialists with Grammy-winning experience across
multiple music genres.
Bishop will serve as recording engineer/producer for Five/Four, the name of
which was derived from the initial plan for five members, cut down to four when
one of them was retained by Concord.
"Also, the uncommon 5/4 time signature made famous by the Dave Brubeck
Quartet in the 1959 jazz hit, 'Take Five,' seemed to fit us well, especially
with having worked with Dave Brubeck on so many projects," Friedrich said.
The Five/Four quartet has 14 total Grammys among them. Bishop has seven of his
own and is up for two more at the Grammy Awards on Sunday.
"Telarc branded an identity — a particular sound and quality," he
said. "The heart of what has maintained that production value is going
with us into Five/Four Productions."
For details about Five/Four Productions, visit http://recording.pro,
or contact the company at
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or (510) 545-7991.
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