Category: Uncategorized

Recording a Chamber Orchestra

As told last month, Richard Weiss received a commission to create a full-length ballet based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and composer J Mark Scearce was commissioned to write the score.  Both the ballet (produced and performed by Carolina Ballet) and the music (performed by the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle) were enthusiastically received and reviewed both at Memorial Hall in Raleigh and at DPAC in Durham earlier this month.  While the text may have been a tragedy, the performances were an absolute triumph!

In between the Raleigh and the Durham shows, Manifold Recording became the venue for a very special recording session.  Here is a video that gives a glimpse into that recording session:

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Macbeth at 400 leaps off the page

It took 400 years after the death of the Bard for the stars to align, but Carolina Ballet has realized the impossible–a telling of the story of Macbeth without words.  The world premiere performance at the Duke Energy Center in Raleigh demonstrated without a doubt that this production will be a favorite in the repertoire for a long time to come.  And Manifold Recording has a role to play in realizing that.

As Robert Weiss, Artistic Director and CEO of Carolina Ballet, explains in the performance program:

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I have thought about a ballet to this great tragedy for a long time but was never able to find music which I felt really did justice to the story in the way I wanted to tell it.  Therefore, I asked composer J. Mark Scearce if he would be interested in creating a score for the ballet.  […]  We worked together in New York City for six weeks this past summer (on a fellowship from NYU) and in an amazing burst of creative energy, Mark completed the full piano score for the ballet–two hours of music that tells the story in a fluid, dramatic, musical language just waiting to be set to dance.

Mark Scearce fulfilled not only his promise to Robert Weiss, but a promise he made to us as well…
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Continue reading “Macbeth at 400 leaps off the page”

Sam Pollard selects Manifold Recording for NC location shot

Sam Pollard is a legend in both the documentary film world and the world of narrative film editing.  Last week he came to North Carolina, both to participate in the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and to do an interview for an upcoming documentary project that is scheduled to air in this fall on PBS.

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Ed Stephenson, Wayne Krantz, Kimiko Ishizaka, and more!

I cannot believe it’s been nearly 3 months since I last updated the blog.  That’s not a sign about how quiet things have been, but rather how busy they have been!

In January we started a flamenco project with Ed Stephenson and his Paco Band.  We did several days of pre-production, several days of tracking, one more day of tracking to do, and then we’ll be mixing the album for release later this year.  We shot a video of one of the songs that will also be released with the album.  Here’s a few images from that:

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Acoustic Duo win Songwriting Contest…and a day in the studio

Beat Your Boots is the name of a new acoustic guitar duo from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Stationed at Fort Bragg, Chris Roberts and Jacob Eubanks write and perform original tunes that are gaining traction on local radio stations such as 95.7 WKML and winning fans as they open shows in the area.

Last year we offered a day in the studio as a prize for the annual Huske Unplugged Singer/Songwriter Competition. I had a chance to see some of the winners from years past, and I was impressed! New artists need every advantage they can get these days, and we felt that when the audience and the judges pick the best of more than 50 new artists, the winner deserves to make a demo they can be proud of. This year, Chris and Jacob won, and so it was their turn to find a day they could take leave from the base and record some songs. Turns out it took them until nearly Christmas to take that leave.

Here are some photos from that session:
Continue reading “Acoustic Duo win Songwriting Contest…and a day in the studio”

In the studio with Jimmy Herring…

This is just a very brief posting to share some photos of Jimmy Herring’s visit to Manifold Recording and his performance at The Miraverse. Here’s Jimmy pulling some great sounds out of his Telecaster:

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Some fast fingerwork on his favorite new toy:

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Jimmy listening to tracks of the session in the Control Room:

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Before you know it, all the band’s gear is loaded into the garage…

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…and onto the bus, headed for Colorado in the morning.

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More soon!

Jimmy Herring is coming to The Miraverse!

August is going to be that much hotter in North Carolina when guitar legend Jimmy Herring fires up his guitar rig August 17th-18th at The Miraverse.  Jimmy will be teaching master classes each day, and he and his band will be welcoming participants to join in afternoon jam sessions.  In the evening, Jimmy and his band will be playing in the amazing Music Room at Manifold Recording.  This will provide a unique opportunity to hear one of the finest guitar players in one of the finest studios in the world.

For more information, see Jimmy’s announcement.  If you want to reserve a spot for one or both days, or for one or both evening performances, send email to jh-session2012@miraverse.com

Space is very limited, so if you are interested, let us know ASAP!

Neocapitalism

There seems to be a general consensus that the two fundamental governors of capital market behavior are fear and greed. I believe that a new kind of capitalism can be implemented based on two other levers: curiosity and generosity. When things are not working, we can be curious and discover new solutions. When things are working, we can share our abundance. Thoughts?

New Blog Host: WordPress.com

I have moved my blog over to WordPress.com.  It’s not that I didn’t like the previous hosting service, but they sent me a note saying they’d no longer be responsible for providing free WordPress.org hosting, and I could not be bothered to fight with them about that.

The transition has not been perfect.  I started off doing something incredibly bone-headed, which made it impossible for me to export my blog.  I then fixed that, but then other problems made the imports not work as expected (or not work at all).  The WordPress.com support team were responsive, and after several iterations, they were able to import my 199 posts and have all my images hosted on their site.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that all of my photos have been renamed slightly, which means that any references out there on the web are likely to wind up with Error 404, until they can be fixed to point to the right places.

That is indeed a bummer.  But I that’s about as good as it’s going to get, I’m afraid.

I will miss the direct SQL access I had from my own hosting service, but I would miss even more not being able to post any new blog entries.