The Van Gelder Studio is a recording studio located at 445 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Following the use of his parent's home at 25 Prospect Avenue, Hackensack, New Jersey for the original studio, Rudy Van Gelder (1924-2016) established the new location for his recording studio in 1959. It has been used to record many albums released by jazz labels such as Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse!, Verve and CTI.
Video Van Gelder Studio
Background
From around 1952, beginning with a session led by Gil Melle that was sold to Blue Note, recordings were made by Van Gelder for commercial release in the living-room of his parents' house at 25 Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, New Jersey, a house that had been built with the intention of doubling as a recording studio (the area was later subsumed by the Hackensack University Medical Center). In 1959, Van Gelder moved to a new facility in Englewood Cliffs. The last recording session at Hackensack and the first at Englewood Cliffs were both led by Ike Quebec and are contained in From Hackensack to Englewood Cliffs, a collection of singles recorded by the saxophonist in July 1959.
Notable recordings made at Hackensack include Miles Davis' Workin' and Steamin' (1956); solo debuts by Hank Mobley (Hank Mobley Quartet, 1955) and Johnny Griffin (Introducing Johnny Griffin, 1956).
Van Gelder's recording techniques were a closely guarded secret, to the extent that microphones were moved when photography of bands was taking place in order to disguise his means of recording.
The new structure, by architect David Henken, was inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and bore some resemblance to a chapel, with 39-foot ceilings and fine acoustics. Critic Ira Gitler described the studio in liner notes for saxophonist Booker Ervin's The Space Book (1964): "In the high-domed, wooden-beamed, brick-tiled, spare modernity of Rudy Van Gelder's studio, one can get a feeling akin to religion". "When I started making records, there was no quality recording equipment available to me" Van Gelder recalled in 2005. "I had to build my own mixer. The only people who had quality equipment were the big companies. They were building their own electronics".
Notable recordings made at Englewood Cliffs include John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (1964); Sonny Rollins' Sonny Rollins on Impulse! (1965), Alfie (1966) and East Broadway Run Down (1966); Stanley Turrentine's Cherry (1972) and Don't Mess with Mister T (1973); Andrew Hill's Point of Departure (1964); Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay (1970) and Hank Mobley's Soul Station (1960).
Maps Van Gelder Studio
List of recording sessions
The following table lists recording sessions for albums, held at the studio.
See also
- List of US recording studios
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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