Women’s Audio Mission, a non-profit dedicated to the advancement of women in music production and the recording arts, recently partnered with Manley Labs and Telefunken Elektroakustik, who provided microphones for a recording session with the GRAMMY Award Winning Kronos Quartet.
Telefunken generously loaned WAM a pair of ELA M 260s, AR-51s and CU-29 Copperhead microphones and Manley Labs loaned a Manley Gold Reference specifically for the session.
The Kronos Quartet recorded material for their upcoming performance of “Women’s Voices” on May 11th, a concert series featuring critically acclaimed female composers and performers from around the world, including Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Van-Anh Vo. Vo, who joined the Kronos Quartet in-studio at WAM, has written and arranged five pieces for the quartet that she’ll also perform during “Women’s Voices.”
Women’s Audio Mission founder Terri Winston and staff engineer Laura Dean engineered the session, assisted by Jenny Thornburg. With help from Manley and Telefunken, the session was an incredible success and WAM’s engineers were able to optimally capture the Quartet’s signature sound.
“It was great to have Telefunken and Manley on board for this project,” says Winston.“It made all the difference in the world to have that confidence in our mic selection. Kronos Quartet especially liked the Copperheads on violins and the ELA M 260 and Gold Reference on cello.”
Winston continues, “We couldn’t be happier to have collaborated with Telefunken, Manley and the Kronos Quartet on something that is also a huge part of our mission – to expand the voice of music and media and ensure that women’s ideas, interests and points of view are conveyed throughout our culture and society.”
SoundPure.com coordinated the microphone loans from Telefunken and Manley; the WAM team recorded to Pro Tools HD 2 with Lavry Blue converters, Avedis MA-5, Great River MP-2NV and Millennia HV-3R mic pres, and Earthworks QTC 30 microphones.
The material recorded at WAM will debut at the “Women’s Voices” performance at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on May 11th and 12th.
