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Sasha Matson Jazz Opera in Nine Innings Sasha Matson Jazz Opera in Nine Innings WWW.ALBANYRECORDS.COM TROY1553/54 ALBANY RECORDS U.S. 915 BROADWAY, ALBANY, NY 12207 TEL: 518.436.8814 FAX: 518.436.0643 ALBANY RECORDS U.K. BOX 137, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA8 0XD TEL: 01539 824008 Julie Adams / Daniel Favela © 2015 ALBANY RECORDS MADE IN THE USA DDD WARNING: COPYRIGHT SUBSISTS IN ALL RECORDINGS ISSUED UNDER THIS LABEL. Carin Gilfry / Rod Gilfry Daniel Montenegro Track List CD 1 CD 2 Act I Act II 1 Chart 1 [2:18] 1 Chart 6 [2:82] 2 First Inning 2 Sixth Inning (Dutch/Angel/Marvin) [7:40] (Dutch/Marvin/Angel) [7:54] Jazz Opera 3 Chart 2 [1:14] 3 Chart 7 [1:37] in Nine Innings 4 Second Inning 4 Seventh Inning (Lilly/Jan/Angel/Marvin) [10:03] (Lilly/Jan/Marvin) [12:30] 5 Chart 3 [1:25] 5 Chart 8 [1:52] 6 Third Inning 6 Eighth Inning Music by Sasha Matson (Jan/Dutch/Angel/Marvin) [8:38] (All) [11:07] Libretto by Mark Miller & Sasha Matson 7 Chart 4 [1:25] 7 Chart 9 [1:23] 8 Fourth Inning 8 Ninth Inning (Lilly/JanAngel) [12:08] (All) [11:47] 9 Chart 5 [1:19] Julie Adams ......................... Lilly Young Gernot Bernroider, drums Total Time CD 2 = 50:12 10 Fifth Inning Daniel Favela ................. Marvin Wilder Russ Johnson, trumpets (Marvin/Jan) [7:41] Carin Gilfry ........................... Jan Green Rich Mollin, bass Rod Gilfry ................... Dutch Schulhaus Jason Rigby, saxophones Total Time CD 1 = 53:51 Daniel Montenegro ......... Angel Corazon Sean Wayland, piano, Hammond C3, Fender Rhodes Conducted by Sasha Matson Directed by Stephanie Vlahos Produced by John Atkinson Sasha Matson & Producer John Atkinson, The Librettist Systems Two, Mark Miller earned a history degree at Stanford and reported for Reuters Brooklyn, New York and CBS Radio. He began a parallel career in show business at 20th Century-Fox as a writer for director-choreographer Bob Fosse, and co-wrote the screenplay for the Universal feature film Mr. Baseball, among other films. He has written 40 books and articles for the National Geographic Society and was a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. As a writer for CBS Radio, Mark was nominated for a 2012 Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement in Television and Radio Writing. The Director Stephanie Vlahos comes to the directing profession with the experience of a former professional singer. A graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School, Stephanie has worked in solo performance in diverging musical arenas. A recipient of the Chanel Diva Award, she is currently Artistic Director for Opera Posse, and is a theatre coach and stage direc- tor for the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists Program at Los Angeles Opera, as well as Director-in-Residence at The Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach. The Producer Producer John Atkinson has been editor in chief of Stereophile magazine since 1986. Formally The Composer educated in the sciences, with an honors degree in physics and chemistry and a postgraduate Sasha Matson spent his formative years in Berkeley, California, where his father taught philosophy at qualification in the teaching of high-school science, his passion was always for music. A musician the University of California. He received a Bachelors Degree in Composition from the San Francisco (primarily on bass guitar, but also on recorder, clarinet, violin, and viola da gamba), a sound recordist, Conservatory of Music. Moving to Los Angeles, he has scored music for feature film and other multi- and an audiophile, Atkinson pursued all three areas simultaneously in the 1960s and ’70s, before media. Sasha received the Ph.D. in Composition and Theory from UCLA. Recordings of his work have finally settling down in magazine publishing in 1976, when he joined the UK’s Hi-Fi News & Record been released on the AudioQuest and New Albion labels. Sasha writes about audio and music, and is Review. He has produced, engineered, mastered or played instruments on more than 40 commercially an Associate Editor for Positive Feedback Online. Sasha has taught at La Grange College, Long Island released LPs and CDs since 1972. University, and The State University of New York. In 2000 he moved with his family to Cooperstown. Notes his belt. The studio has a superb collection of microphones both vintage and modern, and instruments “It breaks your heart.” That was the poetic language A. Bartlett Giamatti used in his beautiful essay include a truly outstanding Steinway B piano, that used to reside at Carnegie Hall and a gorgeous-sounding “The Green Fields of the Mind,” and I am pleased that the Giamatti estate gave us permission to use Hammond C-3 organ that was used in the past by, among others, Long Island supergroup Vanilla Fudge. his text. I began to work backward from there in the fall of 2000. The musicians set up in a rough semicircle facing Sasha at the podium. Trumpeter Russ Johnson Whose heart? And how was it broken? and sax player Jason Rigby were to Sasha’s left behind windowed screens. Rich Mollin on double bass In Giamatti’s thinking, baseball is a game but also an art form, with the capacity to express was in an isolation booth at the back of the room. Gernot Bernroider’s drums were to the right of Rich, the deepest emotional truths about individuals and society. One has only to pick up the sports pages with more isolating screens keeping down the leakage into the other instruments’ microphones. to see this dynamic acted out against the economic and cultural realities of our time. Finally, Sean Wayland’s piano, Hammond organ with its Leslie cabinet, and Fender Rhodes 88 electric Baseball has its own specific historical musical attributes. One of them is the sound of the piano were positioned to Sasha’s right. The sound of the trumpet was picked up with a vintage RCA stadium organ. That sound led me quickly to scoring the music for a “Miles” jazz quintet. This particular 77 ribbon mike, while the saxes were miked with another ribbon, an RCA 44, and a Neumann U87. grouping of instruments is as capable as any large orchestra of realizing music in all its potential To give Mike Marciano enough choices for the sound of double bass, Rich was miked with two variety. The musical materials boil down to the rising three-chord “Charge” fanfare still heard in Neumann U47 FETs pointing at the F holes in the instrument’s body, along with a Shure SM81 higher stadiums everywhere, which can be turned to the dark side by becoming an altered dominant harmony. up. Mike also took a direct feed from a piezoelectric pickup mounted into the bass’s bridge. A pair of Early on in the work process I had a sonic picture in my ear of what a finished recording of Neumann KM 86 cardioids were placed high over the drums to capture the contribution of the room, “Cooperstown” might sound like. I used as a model the great Blue Note stereo recordings of the late while other mikes were positioned close to each drum to capture the direct sound. The piano’s sound ’50s and early ’60s by Rudy Van Gelder: trumpet hard left, saxophone hard right, then added a vocal was captured with a pair of AKG 414 cardioids under the lid, while an AKG D12 and another pair of cast of five. I have nothing on my shelf that sounds quite like it. 414s were used for the organ’s Leslie cabinet. A direct stereo feed was taken from the Rhodes piano. —SASHA MATSON The 27 microphone feeds were converted to digital with ProTools A/D converters running at 88.2kHz and 24 bit word length and recorded straight to ProTools. When Sasha Matson asked me back in 2011 if I would be willing to produce his opera Cooperstown, I The musicians were well-rehearsed and the planned two days proved sufficient for Sasha and wasn’t sure what to expect. The word “opera” conjures up images of temperamental tenors, sweet-voiced me to leave with every measure of music covered by at least one good take. At a subsequent session, sopranos, contrary contraltos, and belligerent baritones, along with a huge orchestra and chorus and Mike Marciano and Justin Volpe assembled the master backing track from the takes Sasha and I had massive logistical issues. That prospect would be daunting, especially when my resume as a recording marked as the best. This would be used for the vocal sessions. producer has involved chamber music, rock music and small-scale jazz. But when Sasha clarified that Cooperstown was a “Jazz Opera in Nine Innings,” that the five solo singers would be accompanied The vocal sessions took place at Schnee Studio in Studio City, California. A popular venue for recording film by a 1950s modern jazz quintet, it took me less than a New York minute to get on board. scores, Bill Schnee’s place opened in 1981, and has an impressive wall of gold and platinum discs for record- ings that have been made there. But for vocal recording, the attraction is Bill’s collection of vintage tubed The band sessions took place at Brooklyn’s Systems Two Recording, which had been recommended by Music microphones and his use of the renowned Mastering Lab microphone preamplifiers. The sounds our “canaries” Matters’ Joe Harley. Systems Two is a popular venue for recording jazz, not only because it has a large room would be making would be picked up with Neumann U87s, perhaps the finest vocal microphone extant.