Who is John Kurlander?

Answer 1

Three-time Grammy winner John Kurlander's career began at Abbey Road Studios in 1967. After completing the studio's unique in-house training, and at the request of George Martin and Geoff Emerick, his first major assignment was as the assistant engineer on The Beatles "Abbey Road" LP. Following this, John assisted on the subsequent solo albums from John, Paul, George and Ringo. He was promoted to First Engineer after less than 2 years of assisting.

Acclaimed EMI producer and songwriter Norman Newell mentored John, and in an association that spanned more than 20 years they produced West End and Broadway musical cast albums, as well as working with artists such as Shirley Bassey, Mrs Mills and Geoff Love. After Norman's retirement, John Yap and his "That's Entertainment" label took over the mantle. John engineered almost all of the catalogue, including Broadway productions of "On Your Toes", "The Rink" and complete studio cast recordings of classics such as "West Side Story", "The King and I" and "My Fair Lady" (which won the prestigious Gramophone Award for Musical Theatre in 1997). John also engineered Andrew Lloyd Webber's Grammy winning "Requiem" featuring Sarah Brightman's hit "Pie Jesu".

In the early 1980s John specialized in tracking full orchestras for major bands. These included Elton John, Toto, (including the multiple Grammy winning "Toto IV" with orchestra arranged and conducted by James Newton-Howard), Extreme, Supertramp, Everything But The Girl, Greg Lake, Pete Townshend, Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" Also the multi-platinum classical crossover albums R.P.O. "Hooked on Classics" and L.S.O. "Classic Rock".

For EMI Classics, he recorded many of the world's major orchestras including London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, The Philharmonia, Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, La Scala-Milan, Vienna Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, and The Philadelphia Orchestra (earning 2 Grammy nominations for classical engineering on what were to be the last recordings of Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra), international classical artists such as Placido Domingo and Itzhak Perlman, Kiri Te Kanawa, Thomas Hampson, Simon Rattle, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Klaus Tennstedt, Franz Welser-Most, Bernard Haitink. Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel. In 1985 John was appointed Chief Recording Engineer of Abbey Road Studios, and Chief Engineer EMI Classics.

He finally left Abbey Road in 1996 and moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on freelance film scoring, and has since worked with film composers Howard Shore, John Barry, Graham Revell, John Debney, David Newman, Marco Beltrami, Mark Mothersbaugh, tomandandy, Antonio Pinto, as well as recording orchestral and choral works for Paul McCartney.

In 2005 John ventured into music for video games, and has recorded two "Star Wars" scores for LucasArts, as well as "World of Warcraft" and "Starcraft II" projects for Blizzard Entertainment.

Film Awards: John is probably best known for his engineering and mixing work on The Lord of the Rings: "Fellowship of the Ring" "The Two Towers" and "Return of the King". John took home 3 consecutive Grammy's for Best Score Soundtrack Album and 3 consecutive TEC Awards for Best Film Sound Production.

Academy Awards to Composers:

David Newman for "Anastasia" (nomination)

Howard Shore for LOTR "Fellowship of the Ring" (winner)

Howard Shore for LOTR "Return of the King" (winner)

Marco Beltrami for "3:10 to Yuma" (nomination)

jjkofla@AOL.com Jan 2008