Author Archives: Colleen

Snowstorm Nemo edition

Production schedules are great…especially when they leave you three or more months of wiggle room to allow an apocalyptic blizzard to blast through town and obliterate your last recording sessions.

Although we were set to finish recording February 11-13, Snowstorm Nemo arrived February 8-9, dumping as much as 40 inches of snow in less than 24 hours on much of southern Connecticut.

While Emily was trapped in her house for a few days, state-wide driving bans kept Colleen trapped in her New London hotel, even after her orchestra cancelled its Feb 9 concert. Once we realized our engineer and his recording equipment were also snowed in, and all major roads in and out of New Haven remained closed the 11th and 12th, we decided to postpone until a comfortably snow-free time of year. Like May.

Although we were not able to rehearse or record during Colleen’s visit, we were able to briefly meet right before she drove to an engagement in New York. Here we are in front of an enormous pile of snow!

Images from the studio

Recording set-up in the church

Listening to a fresh take

Using lights in the dark to minimize background buzz from ceiling lights

Harp solo!

Tuning in the darkness, view from the equipment

Tuning in the darkness

Finishing recording on a cold January day (with snow!)

Noise reduction 101

January recording sessions finished

A few days ago, we finished the first of our two recording sessions.

We spent three days, January 14-16, recording in the sanctuary of Christ Presbyterian Church in New Haven, CT. It’s intense work, to be sure, but so gratifying. We are thrilled to be working with Mateusz Zechowski of Studio Teo, who provides keen musical insight in addition to his recording engineering expertise. During these January sessions, we recorded Russell Nadel’s Orchard Sunset, Michael Weinstein-Reiman’s Roland, Aaron Price’s Amber Veil, Naftali Schindler’s Chants, Pastorals, and Antiphons of the New Moon, and our transcription of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne Nos. 2 and 4. In all, we laid down about 2/3 of the music for the album.

When we weren’t recording, photographer Courtney Potter was snapping pictures of us in various spots around New Haven, including Union Station and the elegant New Haven Lawn Club. Thanks to her stellar work, we have beautiful photography for our album packaging, plus many more photos. We’re giving sneak peaks of the photos on our Facebook page, so be sure to like Apple Orange Pair to see them all! Here’s a really cool one:

Preparing to record

We are back from an extended December break, during which we played a collective bunch of Nutcrackers, orchestra concerts, and church jobs in Virginia and New England. Whew! In between, Colleen got to experience the travails of transportation problems, and is now equipped with a shiny red new station wagon for continued road fun with the harp.

We’re hitting the recording studio starting January 14, and are excited to be working with renowned sound engineer and oboist Mateusz Zechowski in New Haven. We are even more excited to (probably) be recording in our old performance venue, Christ Presbyterian Church, at which we have so many fans and friends. Our experiences at this church, musically and otherwise, have been increasingly meaningful to us both over the course of 8+ years (even before we started playing together!). We are glad to be able to acknowledge the wonderful people there, and the church’s lovely sanctuary, by using it for our first recording.

During our time together in January, we will be recording at least 2/3 of our CD (the remainder to be done in February when Colleen is back for Eastern CT Symphony); meeting with graphic designers; and having amazing photo shoots with the talented Courtney Potter Cook, a photographer from North Carolina. We are looking forward to her creative assistance in fashioning a unique image for our CD, poster, and other recording-related items!

Goal reached!

We’ve reached our goal! Thanks to 115 backers both on and off Kickstarter, the campaign to record our first album is fully funded, with a little extra on top. We are grateful to each backer for their invaluable affirmation of not only our recording, but the wonderful new music it will showcase by Michael Weinstein-Reiman, Sarah Beth May, Naftali Schindler, Russell Nadel, and Aaron N. Price.

During the next several months, we will be hitting the recording studio with Mateusz Zechowski of Studio Teo, hiring a real graphic designer, and getting new duo photos, among the many other tasks required to make our album a reality. We have recording dates lined up in New Haven at our favorite performance venue, Christ Presbyterian Church, in mid-January and mid-February, for about 60 total minutes of music–most of it brand-new and never before recorded. We are shooting for a June 2013 release.

Stay tuned for more updates as we embark on this new adventure!