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Rudy Van Gelder

Rudy Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 – August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz recording, known for engineering thousands of seminal albums that defined the genre's sound on vinyl and later formats.^[1]^[2] Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Van Gelder initially trained as an optometrist but pursued his passion for audio engineering from a young age, setting up his first makeshift studio in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey, where he began recording jazz sessions in the early 1950s.^[1]^[2] His career took off in 1953 when he started working with Blue Note Records after being introduced by musician Gil Mellé, eventually becoming the label's primary engineer and capturing the performances of icons like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.^[2]^[1] In 1959, Van Gelder transitioned to full-time engineering, quitting his optometry practice to build a custom-designed studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, where he recorded for labels including Prestige, Impulse!, and CTI, producing classics such as Coltrane's A Love Supreme (1964), Davis's Walkin' (1954), Hancock's Maiden Voyage (1965), and Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus (1956).^[1]^[2] His signature style emphasized warm, realistic sound with clear instrument separation, achieved through innovative use of Neumann microphones, magnetic tape, and later digital techniques, which set a standard for jazz recordings in the 1950s and 1960s.^[1]^[2] Van Gelder's meticulous approach, including wearing surgical gloves during sessions to avoid fingerprints on equipment, contributed to his reputation for precision and created an optimal environment for musicians.^[1] Later in his career, he served as the house engineer for Creed Taylor's CTI label in the 1970s, engineering hits like Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay (1970) and Esther Phillips's What a Diff'rence a Day Makes (1975), before focusing on remastering projects, including the Blue Note Rudy Van Gelder Editions series starting in 1999.^[1]^[2] Honored with the 2009 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for advocacy, a 2012 lifetime achievement Grammy from the Recording Academy, and the Audio Engineering Society's Gold Medal in 2013, Van Gelder's legacy endures through his vast discography, which influenced generations of engineers and preserved the essence of jazz performance.^[2]^[1]^[3]^[4]

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Rudy Van Gelder was born on November 2, 1924, in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Dutch immigrant parents Louis Van Gelder and Sarah (née Cohen), who operated a women's clothing store in Passaic.^[5]^[6] The family resided in Hackensack, New Jersey, where Van Gelder spent his childhood immersed in a supportive environment that encouraged his emerging interests in music and technology.^[7] As a youth, Van Gelder played the trumpet in his local high school marching band, an experience that introduced him to ensemble music and sparked a lifelong appreciation for jazz and big band sounds.^[8]^[9] In adolescence, he developed a passion for amateur radio, earning a ham radio license (W2TMD) and spending time tinkering with electronics, including early experiments with microphones and home recording devices in the family living room.^[8]^[1] The post-World War II economic stability in the United States enabled Van Gelder's family, through the steady income from their clothing store, to support his technical hobbies without financial strain, fostering an environment conducive to such pursuits.^[6] Later, he transitioned to formal training in optometry as a stable professional path.^[5]

Optometry training and early interests

Rudy Van Gelder pursued formal training in optometry after high school, enrolling at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia, where he earned a Doctor of Optometry degree in 1946.^[10] His decision to study optometry was influenced by an interest in precision and technical fields, building on a childhood hobby of amateur radio operation that sparked his fascination with electronics and sound.^[11] Upon graduation, Van Gelder established and maintained his own optometry practice in Teaneck, New Jersey, which served as his primary profession from 1946 until 1959.^[10]^[12] Parallel to his optometric career, Van Gelder's passion for audio recording grew in the late 1940s, leading him to acquire his first professional-grade equipment, including disc recorders for 78-rpm formats, to capture performances by local jazz musicians in the New York area.^[13] These early endeavors were driven by a desire to preserve high-fidelity sound, allowing musicians to obtain personal reference discs of their work.^[14] By the early 1950s, he upgraded to magnetic tape recording with an Ampex 300-C machine acquired in 1951, further refining his technical approach while still working full-time in optometry.^[15] Van Gelder balanced his dual pursuits by conducting recording sessions on evenings and weekends, often in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey, which doubled as an impromptu studio.^[16] This arrangement highlighted his commitment to recording as a serious avocation, sustaining it alongside optometry until 1959, when he transitioned to engineering full-time after closing his practice.^[12]^[14]

Recording career

Home studio beginnings

In 1946, shortly after graduating from college, Rudy Van Gelder established a makeshift recording studio in the living room of his parents' newly built home at 25 Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, New Jersey.^[17] The setup was designed with input from architect Sidney Schenker, featuring a dedicated control room adjacent to the living room, separated by a double-paned glass window to minimize sound bleed while allowing visual monitoring of performers.^[17] This arrangement transformed the family space into a functional recording environment, reflecting Van Gelder's growing passion for audio engineering as a hobby alongside his optometry practice.^[18] Van Gelder began recording local jazz and classical musicians on weekends, often inviting amateur friends and emerging professionals such as pianist Bill Triglia and drummer Sonny Igoe to sessions in the late 1940s.^[17] These early efforts were typically conducted for free or at minimal cost, serving primarily as a means to experiment and refine his technical abilities rather than as a commercial venture.^[19] The informal atmosphere attracted a steady stream of local talent eager for high-quality home recordings, fostering Van Gelder's reputation within New Jersey's music community before any formal label involvement.^[20] Initially self-taught through trial and error, Van Gelder relied on basic equipment, starting with a Presto turntable and cutter head for direct-to-disc recording on lacquer-coated aluminum discs, paired with affordable public address microphones.^[19] He later upgraded to more advanced gear, acquiring an Ampex 300 tape recorder in 1951 and a Neumann U-47 microphone, which he adapted for jazz sessions with guidance from fellow engineer Rein Narma.^[17] These tools allowed greater flexibility in capturing performances, though Van Gelder often built or modified components himself to suit his needs.^[17] Van Gelder's optometry practice in Teaneck provided the financial stability to support this experimental phase without immediate pressure for profitability.^[17] His first paid session came in 1951, recording vocalist Joe Mooney's "We'll Be Together Again" for the Carousel label, marking the transition from pure hobby to a supplementary income source.^[17] This milestone, while modest, validated his home setup's viability and encouraged further professional engagements on evenings and weekends.^[19]

Blue Note and label associations

In 1953, jazz saxophonist Gil Mellé introduced Rudy Van Gelder to Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records, which led to Van Gelder engineering his first session for the label that year.^[2] This marked the beginning of a prolific partnership, with Van Gelder recording practically every Blue Note session from 1953 to 1967, capturing the essence of hard bop and modal jazz during the label's golden era.^[2] Among the iconic albums he engineered were John Coltrane's Blue Train (1957), which showcased Coltrane's tenor saxophone in a quintet setting, and Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage (1965), featuring the pianist's quintet in a seminal exploration of post-bop harmony.^[2] During this period, Van Gelder also worked concurrently with other independent labels, solidifying his reputation as the premier recording engineer for East Coast jazz. For Prestige Records, he engineered Miles Davis's Walkin' (1954), a compilation drawn from live club sessions that highlighted Davis's quintet in a blues-inflected hard bop style.^[21] He similarly contributed to Savoy Records, recording sessions for artists in the burgeoning bebop scene and accommodating multiple labels by scheduling dedicated days of the week for each.^[22] These associations, initially conducted in his Hackensack home studio, elevated Van Gelder's profile as the go-to engineer for capturing the raw energy and tonal clarity of jazz ensembles.^[23] Van Gelder's perfectionism was evident in the strict rules he enforced during these sessions, such as prohibiting food or drink in the studio to maintain hygiene and focus, and requiring that only he handle equipment while wearing gloves.^[4] These practices reflected his meticulous approach to sound quality, ensuring optimal conditions for musicians without the aid of multi-track editing, and contributed to the distinctive "Van Gelder sound" that became synonymous with Blue Note's output.^[23]

Later professional engagements

In 1959, Van Gelder closed his optometry practice in Teaneck, New Jersey, to dedicate himself fully to recording engineering, a decision enabled by the steady demand from his growing clientele in the jazz industry.^[10] This shift built on his earlier successes with Blue Note Records, allowing him to expand beyond jazz's core labels.^[24] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Van Gelder's studio became a key resource for Impulse! Records, where he engineered seminal sessions featuring artists like John Coltrane and Oliver Nelson, capturing the label's innovative fusion of jazz and broader influences.^[25] He also served as the house engineer for Creed Taylor's CTI label during the 1970s, producing jazz-funk and fusion recordings such as Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay (1970) and Esther Phillips's What a Diff'rence a Day Makes (1975).^[1] His work diversified further in the late 1990s with non-jazz projects, including engineering tracks for the Cowboy Bebop anime soundtrack by The Seatbelts, blending jazz elements with electronic and orchestral sounds at his Englewood Cliffs facility.^[26] Van Gelder led the RVG Edition remastering initiative for Blue Note Records beginning in 1999, personally overseeing the remastering of over 100 classic albums from analog tapes to 24-bit digital format for enhanced CD releases, revitalizing the label's catalog with improved clarity and depth.^[27] In a 1995 interview, he advocated strongly for digital recording over analog, arguing that vinyl's inherent surface noise and distortion limitations had long constrained audio fidelity, making the transition to digital a necessary advancement.^[28]

The Van Gelder Studio

Design and relocation

By the late 1950s, the growing professional demands on Rudy Van Gelder following his breakthrough recordings for Blue Note Records after 1953 necessitated a larger, dedicated space beyond the makeshift setup in his parents' Hackensack home. In 1959, he relocated to a custom-built studio at 445 Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, which opened in July upon issuance of the certificate of occupancy. This move marked a significant upgrade, allowing for expanded ensemble sizes and more controlled recording environments.^[2]^[29] Van Gelder personally oversaw the architectural design in collaboration with architect David Henken, drawing inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian style to create a structure using natural materials like concrete blocks, Douglas fir arches, and cedar decking. The studio featured a spacious live room with a 30-foot-high vaulted ceiling to provide natural reverb and an open layout free of columns, accommodating up to 17 musicians such as Duke Ellington's orchestra. Adjacent to it was a control room optimized for acoustic isolation, equipped with a ribbon of seven double-paned glass windows for visibility while minimizing sound bleed. The building was constructed on a concrete slab foundation with integral-color burnt sienna concrete blocks for controlled sound reflection.^[30]^[31] The project was initially funded through Van Gelder's earnings from Blue Note sessions and a construction loan, supported by label founder Alfred Lion, who provided steady work to ensure its viability. At launch, the facility doubled as Van Gelder's residence, with the second floor serving as living quarters while the ground level housed the recording spaces. This dual purpose persisted until later modifications separated the functions more distinctly.^[2]^[31]^[29] As recording industry standards shifted toward multi-track techniques in the 1960s, Van Gelder adapted the studio by incorporating upgrades, including the addition of four isolation booths around 1970 to enable separate tracking of instruments and reduce bleed—essential for the era's evolving production demands. A fifth booth for piano was added in the 1990s, further enhancing flexibility without altering the core design. These changes allowed the space to remain relevant amid technological advancements while preserving its foundational acoustic character.^[30]^[2]

Operations and historic preservation

During Rudy Van Gelder's tenure, the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, functioned as a dedicated space for jazz recording sessions, where he personally managed all aspects of engineering, mixing, and mastering in-house to maintain creative and technical control.^[32] Sessions were scheduled primarily for jazz artists associated with labels such as Blue Note, Prestige, and Impulse!, allowing Van Gelder to capture performances with minimal external interference and a focus on the genre's improvisational nature.^[33] The studio's operations emphasized efficiency and precision, with Van Gelder often working solo or with limited assistance to oversee everything from microphone placement to final mastering, resulting in thousands of jazz albums produced over decades.^[34] Following Van Gelder's death on August 25, 2016, he bequeathed the studio and his adjacent home to his longtime assistant, Maureen Sickler, ensuring its continued operation as a jazz-focused recording facility.^[30] Maureen, now co-owner with her husband Don Sickler—a jazz producer and trumpeter—has upheld the studio's original mission, booking sessions exclusively for jazz projects and adhering to Van Gelder's methodologies to preserve the site's acoustic integrity.^[33] On April 25, 2022, the Van Gelder Studio and Home was added to the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing its national significance in engineering and performing arts for hosting over 4,000 jazz recording sessions that defined the genre's sound from 1959 to 2016.^[35] The listing highlights the studio's role in advancing audio engineering techniques and its architectural design, which contributed to its unique sonic qualities.^[30] As of late 2024, preservation efforts led by the Sicklers focus on maintaining the studio's original acoustics through careful upkeep of its 30-foot-high ceiling of tongue-and-groove cedar planks supported by Douglas fir arches and concrete floors, which provide natural sound decay without artificial reverb.^[33]^[30] Recent sessions, such as Samara Joy's 2024 album Portrait for Verve Records and Impulse! Records sessions in November 2025, demonstrate ongoing activity, with revenue from bookings supporting maintenance amid challenges like property taxes.^[33]^[36] A New Jersey preservation easement tied to the National Register status further protects the site, allowing Don and Maureen Sickler to sustain operations while honoring Van Gelder's legacy of jazz-centric recording.^[33] The 1959 design's high ceiling and exposed beams continue to influence session setups, enabling the natural reverberation that characterized Van Gelder's work.^[30]

Recording techniques

Signature sound elements

The "Van Gelder sound" is renowned for its warm, intimate jazz tone, characterized by a high signal-to-noise ratio that captures instruments with exceptional clarity and presence.^[17]^[37] This quality was achieved through close miking techniques, which placed microphones near the sound sources to emphasize natural immediacy, combined with minimal processing to preserve the authentic textures of performances.^[17]^[38] The acoustics of his early Hackensack living room studio further enhanced this intimacy by creating a contained, resonant space for small ensembles.^[17] Van Gelder employed peak limiting during mastering to control dynamics and prevent distortion in the narrow grooves of vinyl records, allowing for higher overall volume without compromising fidelity.^[17] He also utilized tape saturation by recording at elevated levels, which naturally compressed peaks and added harmonic richness, enhancing the emotional depth of jazz improvisations without introducing harsh artifacts.^[17] These methods are particularly evident in John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (1964), where the recording delivers a focused, dynamic intensity that underscores the album's spiritual urgency.^[37] A hallmark of Van Gelder's involvement with Blue Note Records from the 1950s onward was the "RVG" etching inscribed in the runout grooves of master discs, serving as his personal signature of craftsmanship and consistency across sessions.^[17]^[39] Despite its acclaim, the Van Gelder sound faced criticisms, notably from bassist Charles Mingus, who in a 1959 DownBeat blindfold test complained that Van Gelder altered instrument tones, making pianos sound overly compressed like xylophones and ruining bass clarity through aggressive processing.^[40] Mingus also objected to added reverb in certain sessions, which he felt artificially expanded the intimate jazz setting.^[41]^[40]

Equipment and methods

Rudy Van Gelder extensively utilized the Neumann U47 large-diaphragm condenser microphone for recording vocals, horns, piano, and other instruments throughout the 1950s and 1960s, valuing its cardioid and omnidirectional patterns for their frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz.^[42]^[43] This microphone, which he acquired in the early 1950s as one of the first in New York outside major studios, required custom interfacing due to its high output, leading him to collaborate with technician Rein Narma on attenuators and gain blocks optimized for its signal.^[44] To enhance isolation in his compact home studio setups during this period, Van Gelder employed close-miking techniques, positioning microphones near instruments to minimize bleed while preserving clarity for jazz ensembles.^[45] For multitrack recording, Van Gelder relied on Ampex 300 series tape machines, including the 300-C models acquired starting in 1951 and later 300-2C units for two-track stereo by 1959, which supported his transition from mono to stereo captures.^[46] He emphasized operating these at 15 inches per second (ips) for mastering, particularly on 10.5-inch reels, to reduce tape hiss and background noise compared to slower speeds like 7.5 ips.^[46] In later years, during remastering projects for CD releases in the 1990s, Van Gelder incorporated digital consoles and processing, adapting his analog workflows to digital formats while maintaining oversight of the sonic results.^[47] Van Gelder's close-miking approach was complemented by deliberate control of room ambience through his studio's architectural design, which featured treated spaces to balance direct instrument capture with subtle environmental reverb, avoiding excessive decay in small ensembles.^[48] This method allowed precise isolation of elements like bass and drums without multitrack overdubs, prioritizing live performance fidelity.^[49] Throughout his career, Van Gelder maintained a reluctance to disclose his methods, viewing them as proprietary trade secrets essential to his unique engineering style, as noted in rare interviews where he avoided technical specifics.^[25] Following his death in 2016, analyses by the RVG Legacy project have revealed additional details, such as his use of custom equalizers integrated into Rein Narma-built consoles from 1957 onward, featuring three-band EQ sections tailored for Neumann microphone signals and overall mix shaping.^[50]

Reputation and legacy

Critical acclaim during lifetime

During his career, Rudy Van Gelder received significant endorsements from key figures in the jazz recording industry, highlighting his technical prowess and efficiency. Bob Weinstock, founder of Prestige Records, praised Van Gelder in a 1999 interview for his methodical preparation and superior equipment setup, noting that he was "extremely methodical and well-organized," always ready in advance so musicians could "walk in, unpack the horn and start playing" without wasting session time.^[17] This preparation contributed to Van Gelder's reputation as an asset to producers seeking reliable, high-quality results under tight schedules. Blue Note Records, for which Van Gelder engineered nearly every session from 1953 to 1967, prominently marketed his contributions as a hallmark of their distinctive sound in the 1950s, often crediting him explicitly on album covers and labels—a rarity that elevated his personal brand alongside the label's artistic vision.^[51] This approach positioned Van Gelder's engineering as an integral part of Blue Note's "boutique" aesthetic, emphasizing a specialized, intimate jazz recording quality that set it apart from more generic productions of the era. Van Gelder's acclaim distinguished him from contemporaries like Fred Plaut at Columbia Records and Roy DuNann at Fantasy/Contemporary, who, despite their excellence, rarely received on-cover credits or specialized as deeply in jazz engineering.^[51] His unique visibility and focus on capturing the nuances of jazz ensembles, as seen in iconic albums such as Art Blakey's A Night at Birdland, underscored his specialized role in the genre. Van Gelder's in-demand status was evident in his engineering of over 2,000 sessions across more than 50 years, reflecting the trust placed in him by multiple labels.^[52] Blue Note co-founder Alfred Lion commended his fastidious attention to detail, praising Van Gelder's "good ear for jazz" and ability to master subtle elements like drum articulation, which enhanced the label's signature recordings.^[17]

Posthumous influence and studio continuity

Following Rudy Van Gelder's death on August 25, 2016, obituaries and tributes underscored his pivotal role in shaping jazz recordings. The New York Times described him as an audio engineer whose collaborations with artists like Miles Davis and John Coltrane "helped define the sound of jazz on record," emphasizing his technical innovations that captured the genre's essence for generations.^[1] Similarly, NPR highlighted his work on landmark albums, noting that Van Gelder's engineering "captured the sounds of many of jazz's landmark albums," a sentiment echoed in tributes from Blue Note Records, which mourned the loss of a "legend" responsible for thousands of classic sessions.^[53]^[16] Van Gelder's influence persists through ongoing remastered releases and archival efforts that revive his original recordings. Labels like Prestige and Blue Note have continued issuing remasters of his sessions, such as the 2019 Prestige Rudy Van Gelder Remasters series, which drew on his analog masters to maintain sonic fidelity for contemporary audiences. Complementing these, the RVG Legacy website, launched in October 2020, serves as a dedicated archive of his techniques, equipment, and discography, featuring previously unseen photos from his estate and collaborations with Van Gelder Studio to document his six-decade career.^[54]^[55] Under the ownership of Don and Maureen Sickler since 2016—when Van Gelder willed the studio to Maureen, his longtime assistant—the Van Gelder Studio remains active in 2025, hosting sessions that emulate the "Van Gelder sound" through preserved acoustics and equipment. DownBeat reported on late 2024 activities, including reminiscences by the Sicklers in the control room, and highlighted summer 2024 recordings like Samara Joy's Portrait album (Verve), produced by Brian Lynch, which utilized the studio's Douglas fir ceiling and concrete floors for natural reverb. The facility continues to draw modern artists such as Jon Batiste and Esperanza Spalding, ensuring continuity of Van Gelder's methods.^[33] Van Gelder's broader legacy in jazz history inspires contemporary engineers and supports genre preservation via official recognition. His minimalist approach to microphone placement and room acoustics influences today's audio professionals, as noted in archival discussions of his innovations. In 2022, the studio earned designation on the National Register of Historic Places, affirming its status as a cultural landmark tied to mid-20th-century jazz evolution.^[35]

Awards and honors

NEA Jazz Master designation

In 2009, Rudy Van Gelder received the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy, marking the first time the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed this honor on a recording engineer or non-performing professional in the field.^[56]^[57] The fellowship recognized his over 60 years of contributions to jazz documentation, beginning with early sessions in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey, and extending through landmark recordings that defined the genre's sound.^[2] The award included a $25,000 grant and was presented during a public ceremony and concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City on October 17, 2008, ahead of the official 2009 designation.^[56] The National Endowment for the Arts highlighted Van Gelder's pivotal role in capturing the golden age of jazz during the 1950s and 1960s, noting that he recorded nearly every major figure of the era, including sessions with John Coltrane on A Love Supreme (1965) and Miles Davis on Milestones (1958), preserving their improvisational brilliance for future generations.^[2] Upon receiving the honor, Van Gelder emphasized the collaborative essence of his work, stating, "I thought of all the great jazz musicians I recorded and how they would react to this. It was a great honor for me to record them and a greater honor to be recognized by the NEA."^[6] His remarks underscored the interplay between engineer, musicians, and producers in crafting enduring jazz recordings.^[2]

Grammy Trustees Award

In 2012, recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder received the Grammy Trustees Award from the Recording Academy, which honors exceptional creative or technical achievement in the production of recordings.^[58] The award acknowledged his pioneering work in jazz recording, including innovative techniques that captured the essence of performances by artists such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.^[58] The presentation took place at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony preceding the 54th Annual Grammy Awards on February 12, 2012, in Los Angeles, where Van Gelder's contributions to thousands of jazz classics were highlighted as foundational to the genre's sonic legacy.^[59]^[60] Accepted on his behalf by pianist Cecilia Coleman, the honor emphasized his role in engineering sessions for labels like Blue Note and Prestige over six decades.^[61] Within the Trustees Award series, which recognizes nonperforming contributions to the music industry, Van Gelder shared the 2012 recognition with composer Dave Bartholomew and a posthumous award to Steve Jobs, placing him alongside other transformative non-musicians whose technical innovations shaped recorded sound—much like earlier recipients such as producer George Martin.^[62] This Grammy came amid Van Gelder's accumulating honors, following his 2009 NEA Jazz Master designation. In response, Van Gelder noted the award's validation of behind-the-scenes roles in music production.^[63]

Audio Engineering Society honors

In 2009, Van Gelder was elected a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), recognizing his significant contributions to the field of audio engineering.^[64] In 2013, he received the AES Gold Medal, the society's highest award, bestowed for extraordinary contributions to the art of audio recording and reproduction over a lifetime of achievement. The award acknowledged his innovative techniques and lasting impact on jazz and popular music recordings.^[65]

References

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[35]
The Van Gelder Sound: A Legacy of Jazz Recordings
Jun 25, 2023 · His fans covet his recordings for their transparency, clarity, realism, warmth, and presence. And his sound, "the Van Gelder Sound," helped ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[36]
Blue Note: Van Gelder's stamps | LondonJazzCollector
The hallmark of a Rudy Van Gelder master is the presence of his name or initials in the vinyl land between the grooves and the record label.
[37]
What Rudy Van Gelder Did "Wrong" | Reverb News
Jul 21, 2020 · By 1959, though, he'd moved to a purpose-built studio in nearby Englewood Cliffs. Van Gelder Studios soon became crucial to the development ...
[38]
Rudy Van Gelder Heard The Sound Of The Future In The Music Of ...
Sep 1, 2016 · From an early age he had been a ham radio enthusiast, and he became an inveterate “hi-fi” tinkerer always striving to get the sound he ...Missing: hobby adolescence electronics family
[39]
Microphones – RVG Legacy
### Summary of Microphones Used by Rudy Van Gelder
[40]
Interfacing the Neumann U-47 with American Consoles - RVG Legacy
Rudy Van Gelder had ... The modules used were 20 dB gain blocks, optimized for use with the Neumann microphones that Van Gelder used so extensively.Missing: Ampex techniques
[41]
The Van Gelder Sound: Characteristics - RVG Legacy
Throughout his career, Van Gelder used artificial reverberation equipment to enhance the soundstage of his recordings.
[42]
Tape Recorders - RVG Legacy
Van Gelder then acquired his first Ampex 300-C tape recorder in June 1951. Originally introduced in 1949, Van Gelder said that it was “impossible” to record ...
[43]
Classic jazz in a digital age, part 1: the Rudy Van Gelder edition
May 24, 2018 · Classic jazz in a digital age, part 1: the Rudy Van Gelder edition · Peeps & Quacks (Archives) · Recent Quacks.<|control11|><|separator|>
[44]
Mixing – RVG Legacy
### Summary of Mixing Consoles, Close-Miking Techniques, and Room Ambience Control
[45]
The Secret Legacy of Rudy Van Gelder - SonicScoop
Mar 15, 2017 · “Van Gelder used a mix of types and placements of microphones to bring us as close as possible to Monk, Coltrane, Miles, Horace Silver, [and] ...Missing: tinkering family
[46]
Outboard Gear – RVG Legacy
### Summary of Outboard Gear Used by Rudy Van Gelder
[47]
Rudy Van Gelder (1925-2016) | Stereophile.com
Aug 26, 2016 · The Blue Note sound, in its early incarnation, was pretty much the live sound of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. But this art didn't come ...
[48]
Rudy Van Gelder Musician - All About Jazz
... Teaneck, New Jersey. Among his recordings were early albums by Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. He was a practicing optometrist, but he said in recent years ...
[49]
Rudy Van Gelder, Definitive Jazz Recording Engineer, Has Died
Aug 26, 2016 · Rudy Van Gelder, an audio recording engineer who captured the sounds of many of jazz's landmark albums, died Thursday morning in his sleep.
[50]
Prestige to Release Rudy Van Gelder Remasters Series - JazzTimes
Apr 25, 2019 · Prestige will release 10 remastered CDs next Tuesday as part of its Rudy Van Gelder Remasters series. Van Gelder, the original engineer on ...
[51]
RVG Legacy: Preserving the Legacy of Rudy Van Gelder
Oct 15, 2020 · RVG Legacy features dozens of never-before-seen photos from Rudy's personal collection, and it is sure to become the definitive one-stop destination for all ...
[52]
National Endowment for the Arts Announces the 2009 NEA Jazz ...
Apr 25, 2019 · The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced the recipients of the 2009 NEA Jazz Masters Award, the nation's highest honor in ...
[53]
NEA Announces 2009 Jazz Masters - DownBeat
Recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder will receive the 2009 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. The ceremony and concert will be held on ...Missing: Fellowship | Show results with:Fellowship
[54]
Trustees Award: Rudy Van Gelder - GRAMMY.com
Of course, the amazing cover artwork of the Blue Note classics helped establish that label as the gold standard of jazz, but without the inspired music and ...
[55]
Rudy Van Gelder to be honoured at Grammy Awards
Dec 30, 2011 · ... Rudy Van Gelder is to be homoured at the 2012 Grammy Awards. He will be given a Grammy Trustees Award for "Special Merits" alongside the 91 ...
[56]
Steve Jobs honored with Trustees Grammy - CBS News
Feb 13, 2012 · The other Trustee Award honorees are musician, bandleader, composer, and arranger Dave Bartholomew and recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who ...
[57]
Rudy Van Gelder: Trustees Award Acceptance - GRAMMY.com
Cecilia Coleman accepts The Recording Academy Trustees Award on behalf of Rudy Van Gelder at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony & Nominees Reception in 2012.
[58]
Steve Jobs awarded posthumous special Grammy - Engadget
Jobs, Bartholomew and Van Gelder were awarded the Trustees Award, which recognizes "outstanding contributions to the industry in a nonperforming capacity." The ...
[59]
JazzWax | Substack
**Summary:**