Engineer's Corner: Spotlight on Anna Frick

In this year's newsletters, we will feature profiles of Airshow's engineers, continuing this month with Anna Frick, Engineer and Restoration Project Manager at the Boulder studio.

Even though she is the newest mastering engineer at Airshow's studios in Boulder, Anna Frick brings a wealth of experience and critical listening to mastering and restoration projects alike. Along with David Glasser and Christopher King, she played a vital role in the mastering of both volumes of the epic The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records box sets.

Learn more about how Anna got her start in audio, her favorite aspects about restoration work, and what it was like to work on the Paramount Records project in this month's Engineer's Corner.

Record Store Day + How To Plan a Vinyl Release

Did you know there are Record Store Day participating stores on every continent except Antarctica?

Saturday, April 18 is Record Store Day--the annual event designed to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1000 independently owned record stores in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally--and we are honored to have had a hand in several of the special releases planned for the day. See the full list on the Record Store Day site!

Thinking about vinyl for your next release? Check out our blog post from the archives, How to Plan a Vinyl Release Without Delays or Headaches, to learn more about mastering for a vinyl project.

Grateful Dead News

This being the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Grateful Dead, there are some treats in store. This month's releases include 2 multi-disc LP sets and a newly remastered collection, The Best of the Grateful Dead. This 2 CD, 32 song package includes songs from all 13 Grateful Dead studio albums, newly-remastered by David Glasser from the original master tapes, and restored using Plangent Processing.

For Record Store Day on Saturday, April 18, the 3/29/90 show featuring Branford Marsalis, Wake Up To Find Out, will be released on a 5 LP set. The project was mixed by Jeffrey Norman and mastered by David Glasser. This show was part of the Spring '90, The Other One box set, but we can't wait to spin the LPs!

Available from ORG Music is a 5 LP set of Truckin' Up To Buffalo from July 4, 1989, previously released on CD and DVD. This one was also mixed by Jeffrey Norman and mastered by David Glasser, with lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman.

Stay tuned for more fun stuff this year!

Airshow Takoma Park Wins Best Studio at Washington Area Music Awards

Airshow's Takoma Park studio recently won "Best Recording Studio" at the 29th Annual Washington Area Music Association (WAMA) Awards, which were held March 15 in Falls Church, VA. Takoma Park's Chief Engineer Charlie Pilzer took home "Best Studio Engineer" and "Best Live Sound Engineer" as well.

Not only was it a great night for Airshow, but several client releases were recognized as well, with Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen's Cold Spell (mastered by Randy LeRoy) winning both "Album of the Year" and "Best Bluegrass Recording." The Bumper Jacksons' Sweet Mama, Sweet Daddy, Come In (recorded, mixed and mastered by Charlie Pilzer at Airshow) took home "Best Folk Traditional Recording" while The Nighthawks' 444 (mastered by Charlie Pilzer) won "Best Blues / Traditional R&B Recording." Lulu's Fate's The Blackest Crow (mastered by Charlie Pilzer) won "Best Debut Recording," and the Washington Revels' Sing & Rejoice (recorded, mixed, mastered and produced by Charlie Pilzer) won "Best Classical Recording."

Nominations and balloting for the awards (which are affectionately known as "The Wammies") come from WAMA's membership, which is comprised of musicians, producers, engineers, label executives, concert promoters and music advocates from across the Washington, DC metropolitan region. Find the full list of nominees and winners on the WAMA website.

"Art of Live Recording" Seminar Featuring David Glasser

From April 10 - 13 join Evergroove Studio owner Brad Smalling, producer Alan Evans (Soulive), and Airshow mastering engineer David Glasser for a fun and informative couple of days in the studio honing recording, mixing and mastering techniques and skills.

More Press Coverage of "The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records, Volume Two"

In fall 2014, Third Man Records and Revenant Records released Volume Two of their mammoth collection of material from the catalog of Paramount Records, one of the most important labels in early twentieth century American music.

The project, which featured mastering and restoration by Airshow's David Glasser and Anna Frick, and Christopher King, continues to receive vast critical acclaim. We've rounded up some of the reviews here.

New Tools to Preserve and Share Your Content on the Web

Are you part of a music community that you'd like to document online? Do you have a unique cultural or historical collection that you want to preserve and share online? As a recent project by NYU's Archive of Contemporary Composers demonstrates, you can easily create an accessible content collection powered by the Internet Archive.

Members of our Boulder studio's Restoration Center recently picked up some tips for content aggregators at this year's Music Library Association Conference. Read more in their blog post.