Archive of Abeshouse Productions
More information about Adam’s generosity and impact can be found below.
About
Adam Abeshouse has produced and engineered recordings for labels including Bridge, DG, SONY, Telarc, BMG, ANGEL-EMI, Naxos, Hyperion, ASV, Arabesque, Harmonia Mundi Cala, Koch International/E1 Music, New World Records, Delos, Albany Records, CRI, Pickwick, Pro Arte, Well Tempered, Centaur, and more, as well as for National Public Radio and the Library of Congress. In 1999, he won the GRAMMY Award for Classical Producer of the Year, and was nominated again in 2003.
Mr. Abeshouse won a second GRAMMY Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo Performance category for producing and engineering Garrick Ohlsson's Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 3. In 2012, he won an Echo Klassik award for Best Audio for Video Production with the San Francisco Ballet Production of " A Little Mermaid." In 2013, he produced and engineered the cd for Emanuel Ax- "Variations" which also won an Echo Klassik award.
Services - Production and Engineering
Adam Abeshouse has over 30 years of experience in producing and engineer classical recordings of the highest quality, and is known for consistently achieving the best possible performances from the artists he records. His objective is to create an engaging, clear, and naturally blended sound that showcase the music and musicians at their best.
To achieve this, Mr. Abeshouse draws on his own background as a musician to maintain an atmosphere during recording sessions in which artists are able to achieve peak performances - freeing them from technical concerns and allowing them to concentrate on the music.
Adam Abeshouse records in top studios and concert halls around the world. He offers a full range of services including identifying and booking recording locations, producing, engineering, mixing, and mastering.
The recording equipment owned and used by Mr. Abeshouse contributes greatly to the success of his recordings. His preeminent microphone collection features many DPA, B&K, Neumann Tube and FET (customized by Klaus Heyne), RCA 44s and 77s, Flea 47 and 49's, Royer, Coles & AEA Ribbon Mics, AKG, Telefunken Tubes, Shure, Sennheiser, and many others. The microphones are coupled with the highest quality preamps by Millenia Media, Neve 1073s, M1s by John Hardy, Fern Tube, Neve, and TL Audio, which enables Mr. Abeshouse to custom match microphone and preamps to fit artists' specific needs. He uses Prism analogue to digital converters, Genelec Monitors, and the Pyramix System for recording, editing and mastering.
Services - Mastering
Adam Abeshouse has over a decade of experience mastering classical recordings. In addition for providing mastering for CD audio, Mr. Abeshouse also offers mastering in 5.1 Digital Surround Sound for DVD, television broadcast, and film. Other services offered include sound restoration and improvement for historical and problematic recordings.
For over ten years, Mr. Abeshouse has served as the mastering engineer for "Great Performances from the Library of Congress," a series of recordings co-produced by Bridge Records of never-before issued concert performances recorded in the Library of Congress' Coolidge Auditorium from 1937 through the present.
Services - Orchestral Live Recording Consultation and Optimization
For many orchestras, economic pressures have moved recording away from studio sessions to live performances. In addition to full service live recording, Adam Abeshouse offers a cost effective way to transform an orchestra's archival recordings into audio suitable for commercial release.
Through initial on-site consultation Mr. Abeshouse optimizes an orchestra's existing live recording setup, always keeping in mind the available budget. Mr. Abeshouse then works with the orchestra to determine a budget for remixing and mastering of the live recorded material. Throughout the entire process, Mr. Abeshouse is in constant communication with the orchestra's music director or other artistic staff regarding the editing and sound of the recording. The end product showcases the ensemble with improvements to balance and blend, while retaining the spontaneity of a live concert (without the distraction of coughing and other audience noise).
Orchestras with which Adam Abeshouse has worked include the London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the New York Pops, Prague Radio Orchestra, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony, Tonhalle Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, Amsterdam Baroque, English Chamber Orchestra, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, Kansas City Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Virginia Symphony, Philharmonia Virtuosi, String Orchestra of New York, Colorado Festival Orchestra, and the Riverside Symphony.
Quality recordings created in cost effective ways can be used by orchestras not only for retail purposes, but as donor incentives, thank-you gifts, online promotional and marketing collateral, and more.
Services - Installation Consultation
Having consistently delivered high quality sound recordings in a wide variety of locations and halls, Adam Abeshouse is particularly suited to quickly discern a hall's strengths and weaknesses, and then develop a plan for how to record in it successfully. As a design and recording consultant, he draws on his vast knowledge of current and past technology (based on more than 20 years of experience maintaining a state of the art studio) melded with his ability to satisfy musicians' needs, always keeping maximization of the equipment and budget in mind. He can make recommendations for specific microphones and other equipment to get the best possible recorded sound in the particular space being assessed. Adam Abeshouse also offers oversight on project installation and production of the first professional recordings in a new or renovated location or studio.
Services - Masterclasses
Adam Abeshouse is available for masterclasses on recording technique, understanding how technology and acoustics work together, how to run a recording session for the benefit of the artist, and much more. Through these master classes, students can gain an understanding of the fundamentals of proper technique and apply this to their own recordings, an increasingly beneficial skill set as entrepreneurship in the music world gains importance.
Press
Press Excerpts
"Julia and Andrea along with cellist Karen Ouzounian deliver a heartrending account of Elegy. It's all the more affecting for the rich string tone captured by audio wizard Adam Abeshouse in all three works.
The recordings were made on a couple of occasions. Namely, Sun was done back in 2011, while the others date from last year. However, all took place at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, which seems to be an ideal chamber venue. With Abeshouse at the controls, they project a consistently lifelike image across a generous soundstage in optimal surroundings.
The instrumental balance is perfectly maintained throughout, and the piano, which presents a problem for many sound engineers, convincingly captured. There's just the right amount of percussive bite with no hint of that annoying, upper end digital grain so frequently associated with this instrument. In short, here's one for contemporary chamber music enthusiasts as well as any audiophiles among them."
—Classical Last & Found
“One of the things Ohlsson values most about his association with Arabesque is his working relationships with Adam Abeshouse -- winner of a "Producer of the Year" Grammy Award in 2000, nominated again in 2003. 'A producer is part musician, part editor, and part psychologist,' noted Ohlsson, 'and Adam's genius is that he's so good at all of it. He knows how to manage and balance all the aspects of a recording session so that we get the best results from it. He knows what I'm looking for, and I trust him to give me the best options of the takes we've done.'”
— iClassics.com
“Arabesque's sonics, engineered by the reliably superlative Adam Abeshouse, are detailed, immediate, and strong.”
— American Record Guide
“First a word of praise for the recording, magnificently engineered by Adam Abeshouse. Not only are both instruments captured with tangible fidelity (it feels as though you could reach out and touch the artists), they are accorded such presence and weight that the illusion is created of them actually playing in your listening room.”
— Julian Haylock, BBC Music Magazine
“The Budapest's Beethoven was fresh, scrubbed, shining bright as new and in this set of their Library of Congress recordings we have a chronological history of an extraordinary ensemble. We also have something of a technical triumph. I do not know how Bridge's engineers managed to make masters over fifty years old, some of them probably acetate discs, sound so fine. But they have, and the result is an irreplaceable collection.”
— Gramophone
“With engineering as beguiling as the performances themselves, this is an outstanding release.”
— Julian Haylock, The Strad
“Produced, engineered and edited by Adam Abeshouse at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, the sonics are truly award class. Unless the selection committee all fall asleep at the switch, the sound recording, at least, should be up for a Grammy.”
— New Classik Reviews
“A Bridge Records regular, audio wizard Adam Abeshouse mastered this release giving them another demonstration quality disc. The recordings of the first three chamber works were made at Princeton University's Taplin Auditorium. Presumably done on different occasions, they project a consistent generous soundstage in an accommodating chamber venue.“
— Bob McQuiston, Classical Last & Found
“Producer and engineer Adam Abeshouse has captured the kaleidoscopic colors of Robison's flute, and the corresponding rich varieties of tone from the Charleston orchestra, on this evidence an excellent band with a fine conductor. Strongly recommended.”
— Robert McColley, Fanfare
“This richly textured, spacious recording offers technology's best shot at capturing Mr. Ohlsson's subtle art and the lustrous sound of his Bosendorfer . . . the often surprising dynamic range of the music itself is there to be savored – and to measure your sound system.”
— Lawrence B. Johnson, The New York Times
“The bywords here are subtlety and drama - both very important adjuncts to Beethoven's sound world. I have seldom heard such attention paid to follow - through of dynamics, general balance between instruments, and a willingness to pile on the volume come what may - or to whisper when it is called for.”
— D. Moore, American Record Guide
“Ms. Dinnerstein recorded the set 11-13 March 2005 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. She plays a restored 1903 Hamburg Steinway rather brilliantly inscribed for Telarc by engineer Adam Abeshouse.”
— Gary Lemco, Audiophile Audition
“Loving performances and spectacular sound engineered by the illustrious Adam Abeshouse (audiophiles take note) should qualify this release for some kind of 2007 music award. Don't pass it up!”
— Bob McQuiston, Classical Lost and Found
“What [Adam Abeshouse] and his colleagues have accomplished is extraordinary and surely will become an important addition to the best of the world treasury of great recordings.”
— King Durkee, Copley News Service
“The recordings are more than thirty years old but the technical work of Adam Abeshouse is outstanding. He presents the original stereo sound without noticeable his and yet to my ears has not compromised the robustly natural audio image.”
— Rob Barnett, Music Web International
“The first thing that strikes one while listening to this recording is the depth of sound achieved by recording engineer Adam Abeshouse. While some of this must be credited to the Mason & Hamlin piano and to the Recital Hall at SUNY Purchase, all would be for naught were it not for the work of the engineer, who often remains a true 'unsung hero.'”
— Becker, American Record Guide
