Craftsmanship

"The Telarc Sound of my recordings can best be described," says jazz legend Dave Brubeck, "by a comment made by my son, Darius, who is also a pianist. This is what he said about my Christmas album: 'It felt like I was at home in the same room listening to Dad play.'" Brubeck goes on to point out that "it is presence, whether in a concert hall, night club, or small intimate room, that gives Telarc recordings their realistic, pure sound."

"There is craftsmanship in what Telarc does," says its President and Senior Producer, Robert Woods, who has won eleven of Telarc's forty Grammy Awards. "If it were only a result of the equipment we use, anybody could make recordings like ours." That craft, says Woods, is what Jack Renner and Michael Bishop have developed into an artform, and is largely responsible for setting the Telarc Sound apart from all the rest.

"We're not out to make hyped-up recordings," says Woods. "The kind of sound we hope to achieve has been best described by a prominent conductor commenting on the Telarc Sound: 'This is what I hear standing on the podium, and what I hope the audience behind me hears!'"

Renner, Chairman and Chief Recording Engineer of Telarc, has won six Grammy Awards for "Best Engineered Classical Recording." Michael Bishop, who became a full-time Telarc engineer in 1988, is known throughout the recording industry as a key member of the superb Telarc engineering team, as well as the mastermind behind the outstanding sound effects heard on Telarc' s recordings. His sound effects masterpieces include the four Grammy Award-winning P.D.Q. Bach releases.

Recently, his collaborative engineering effort with Renner on an album of the music of Copland with the Cincinnati Pops and Erich Kunzel won the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Engineered Classical Recording." Bishop has recorded and mixed some of the industry's first DTS 5.1 Surround CDs, and has been the driving force behind Telarc's entry into surround and multi-channel recording.

The engineers and producers at Telarc are perfectionists about the sound of their recordings. "This encompasses every component in the signal chain," Renner stresses, "including microphones, cables, recording and playback electronics, speakers, and even control room acoustical materials." That perfectionism, however, begins with the natural sound of the venue itself.