Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra - Americana - November 30th 2012

Just recently the Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra put on a concert of Americana, featuring the best of American music. This is a group of (mostly) DMA candidates in the Frost School of Music, some of whom are also Fellows with the New World Symphony (a training program for soon-to-be orchestral player hopefuls, under the artistic direction of Michael Tilson Thomas).

The concert opened with an original staging of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, recorded into MAGIX Seqouia through a Yamaha DM-2000 console’s preamps and RME HDSP MADI interface at 24bit/96khz. Microphones were a 50cm spaced pair of DPA 4051, suspended roughly 12 feet above and 3 feet behind the conductor.

After the above Copland performance, the Mancini Institutes’s big band took the stage, for a performance of the complete Duke Ellington Nutcracker (music by Tchaikovsky, arranged by Ellington for big band).

The big band consisted of 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, 5 woodwinds, piano, drums, and bass. Microphone selections consisted of Neumann KMS-105s on trumpets and snare drum, Neumann TLM-103s on trombones and baritone sax / bass clarinet, Schoeps CMC 6xt5g on all other woodwinds, AKG C414 EBs on piano, a Sennheiser MD-421 on kick drum, DPA 4007 drum overheads, and a DPA 4099 on string bass. The string bass was equipped with a pickup, run though a Summit Audio variable impedance tube DI. An additional solo mic (Neumann U-89i) was placed in the trombone section for use as needed.

1 - Overture