When the cast album for the Broadway hit show “Motown The Musical” was ready to be made, the show’s producers called on multiple Grammy Award-winner Frank Filipetti to co-produce, record, edit and mix the album.
In turn, Filipetti called on the new AT5040 cardioid condenser studio vocal microphone from Audio-Technica to capture the full range of one of America’s most iconic music eras and sounds.
“Motown The Musical” officially opened earlier this year at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre and features timeless hit songs such as “What’s Going On,” “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg,” “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “My Girl,” “Dancing In the Street” and “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.”
Filipetti recorded the album at Right Track Studios in Manhattan, and along with co-producer Ethan Popp (musical director for “Motown The Musical”) and executive producer Harry Weinger, he edited and mixed it at his own The Living Room Studios in West Nyack, NY (all in close collaboration with Motown Records Founder and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Berry Gordy).
Filipetti, who has earned Grammy Awards for his Broadway cast album work for shows including “The Book of Mormon,” “Spamalot” and “Wicked,” worked with Gordy, Popp and Weinger to choose from among the 72 songs in the show for the cast album, which also includes four new songs composed by Gordy. All of this music showed off the range and performance of A-T microphones.
On “Motown The Musical,” Filipetti used the new AT5040 for the first time. “I placed it in the vocal booth with Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays Berry Gordy in the show, and it instantly sounded fantastic,” Filipetti recalls. “The vocals just came alive. When Bryan Terrell Clark, who plays Marvin Gaye in the show, heard it, he said he just had to sing through it, too. This was the greatest test you could put a vocal microphone through – in front of the best singers on Broadway – and the AT5040 held up to the high expectations of the users.”
In addition to the AT5040, Filipetti also used other A-T microphones on the recording, including the AE5100 cardioid condenser instrument microphone on the snare drum and the AE2500 dual-element cardioid instrument microphone on the kick, as well as the ATM350 cardioid condenser clip-on microphone on toms.
The AT4047/SV cardioid condenser microphone has become Filipetti’s “Swiss Army mic,” used on everything from vocals to strings to horns. “It’s really my go-to microphone for just about everything,” he says. “The music in ‘Motown The Musical’ is so much a part of the American music songbook that it demands the absolute best when it comes to what we use to record it. And Audio-Technica microphones are always at the top of that list.”
