News of some of my recent projects:
September 2025
An honour to be entrusted with engineering the first production of incoming music director Jakub Hrůša's tenure at the Royal Ballet and Opera, working together with the brilliant Raphaël Mouterde as producer. And what a show it was! Puccini's Tosca, directed by Oliver Mears, and starring Anna Netrebko, Freddie De Tommaso and Gerald Finley.
We broadcast to over 1,000 cinemas across the world, and subsequently post-produced for DVD/Blu-Ray and streaming release in both 5.1 surround and Dolby Atmos. And we were able to indulge our inner nerds through researching the exact positions of the church bells Puccini notated at the start of Act 3, and then attempting to replicate these in the immersive audio sound field.
August 2025
A pleasure working with my friend and colleague Marvin Ware on the BBC Radio 3 broadcasts of the two operas featured in this year's Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall. First was the Glyndebourne production of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, and then a joint BBC Philharmonic/English National Opera production of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District. Very different works, both brilliant!
August 2025
Back to the newly-refurbished Abbey Road Studio One for a fun project with a lot of microphones! Working with a large orchestra (mainly made of members of The Hallé, and led by Marie Schreer), Southby Productions, d&b audiotechnik and Neumann, we recorded both Mahler's 1st Symphony and Beethoven's 5th Symphony to create world-class demonstration material for both the d&b Soundscape system and the Neumann MCM Miniature Clip Mic system. Neumann supplied about 90 of their new clip-on mics, and we combined that with Abbey Road's superlative mic collection, and Pete Cobbin and Kirsty Whalley's "Thunder Array" to capture fully-immersive audio in both Soundscape and Dolby Atmos. The conductor was the brilliant polymath Aaron Holloway-Nahum, who founded Riot Ensemble, composes, teaches at the Royal Academy of Music, and also somehow finds time to be Head of Immersive Audio at Southby Productions.
July 2025
My second project for ABRSM this year, this time recording backing tracks for the Grades 6 to 8 Jazz Syllabus. Because ABRSM needed the ability to make mix-minus versions of everything (i.e. a mix with one instrument left out), we had to record this with each musician in a different room. The music department of Trinity School was ideal for this, with lots of soundproofed, acoustically-treated rooms. And the luxury of a Steinway D piano! Keeping everything together could be a challenge, but not when you have the cream of London's jazz crop playing, including Joe Pettitt, Chris Eldred, Mike Mondesir, Mark Mondesir, Tommy Emmerton, Tom Cawley, Amy Baldwin, Rod Youngs, Zoe Rahman, Will Barry, Flo Moore, Matt Skelton and Mark Armstrong.
June 2025
My third year at Wembley Stadium for the Capital Summertime Ball, with Mariah Carey, Reneé Rapp, Jessie J, Benson Boone, Zara Larsson and many more.
May 2025
The Barrie Kosky and Tony Pappano Ring cycle continues with part two: Die Walkure. Das Rheingold was good, but this is even better! Natalya Romaniw as Sieglinde was a revelation. Bring on Siegfried next year!
Followed by Ballet to Broadway, four works showcasing the remarkable choreography of Christopher Wheeldon, with music by Joby Talbot, Joni Mitchell, Keaton Henson and George Gershwin. This was a real team effort, with rapid changeovers and a lot of fast microphone setups in the short intervals, including orchestras set up on both the stage and in the pit.
March 2025
Produced and engineered recordings of the complete new flute syllabus for ABRSM. A joy to work with musicians of the highest quality: Katherine Baker (principal flute, Royal Opera House), Claire Wickes (principal flute, English National Opera), accompanied by Martin Cousin and Iain Farrington. Recorded at Silver Shark Studios in Tooting.
February 2025
To Menuhin Hall to produce and engineer the complete Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues with the brilliant Italian pianist Sofia Sacco for Orchid Classics.
December 2024
An honour and a privilege to be part of the Sky News team filming King Charles' Christmas Broadcast 2024. A happy few days were spent with my old friends Simon Kiln and Mike Cox in Buckingham Palace and the amazing Fitzrovia Chapel - an oasis of serenity and beauty just a few minutes from Oxford Circus. It was a particular pleasure to produce the recording of Inner Voices youth choir as they sang Once in Royal David's City, with a lovely new arrangement of the final verse by their founder and director Ed Watkins.
December 2024
A second time at the O2 Arena in Greenwich with Southby Productions to mix FOH for the Capital Jingle Bell Ball. Great atmosphere, with acts including Coldplay, Teddy Swims, Katy Perry and Tom Grennan.
October 2024
Back to North Norfolk for my seventh season at the Thursford Christmas Spectacular. I love this show, and the active encouragement I'm given to be adventurous and creative with the sound design. Over 100,000 visitors come to see the show from all over the country and beyond, and we want to give every one of them the best experience. This year, our second with the d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system, we pushed it close to the limits, and I'm grateful for the support and continual development of both d&b and the amazing Atlas immersive audio control application.
thu
September 2024
With Neil Hutchinson again, this time at the Barbican, producing the audio for a Marquee TV filming of Sir Antonio Pappano conducting the LSO in Szymanowski's Concerto Overture and Mahler's Symphony No. 1.
September 2024
First show of the season at the re-branded Royal Ballet & Opera, and it's a cracker - David McVicar's production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Julia Jones conducted with fire and energy, and a top-notch cast including Maria Bengtsson and Luca Micheletti responded in equal measure. Soprano Ying Fang sang the role of Susanna at our first recording - her big aria in the last act ("Deh vieni no tardar") was exquisite. But, sadly, she was unwell for the live cinema broadcast, and Siobhan Stagg jumped in brilliantly at the last moment. Neil Hutchinson engineered, and I produced.
June 2024
Back to Wembley Stadium at FOH for this year's Capital Summertime Ball and 80,000 people having a fabulous time in slightly lower temperatures than last year! Southby Productions have put together a top team for these events and it's a delight to be part of it. A packed show including great sets from Sabrina Carpenter, Meghan Trainor and the burning-brighter-than-ever star from my home town of Croydon - Raye.
May 2024
Broadcasting three shows from the Royal Opera House to thousands of cinemas across the world this spring. The heart-rending ballet Manon, with music by Massenet, followed by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and then the last production of Tony Pappano's twenty two incredible years as Music Director: Giordano's Andrea Chénier, with a stellar cast including Jonas Kaufmann, Sondra Radvanovsky, Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Katia Ledoux and an extrordinary cameo from Elena Zilio. At a time when excellence in the arts is being attacked and belittled by people and organisations that really should know better, I am very aware what a privilege it is to be part of the team that brings these magnificent, life-affirming, thought-provoking and world-class shows to a wider audience.
March 2024
A big project to start the year, with the first ever drum kit syllabus from ABRSM. I mixed and mastered all the recordings for this across nine grades, including all the backing tracks and demo tracks. Multitracks came in from a huge range of brilliant drummers, and it was my job to keep and enhance all their individual styles and feels whilst making the whole thing gel together so that students could switch between tracks in any combination and not have to keep adjusting their playback settings. As a drummer, this was heaven for me - it's not often that my studio has me mastering whilst sat at a drum kit playing along to 81 different songs!
I also spent a lot of time proof-listening to the recordings: checking that the scores provided by the composer/drummers actually matched with what they played. Because I play myself, I get how drummers very rarely play exactly what's written! But for examination purposes the dots and audio need to be the same to make it fair for all, and so a lot of detailed listening was required.
The response to the books and recordings so far has been really positive, and it's lovely to be part of a project that brings so much pleasure to drummers young and old.
December 2023
To the O2 Arena in Greenwich with Southby Productions to mix FOH for the Capital Jingle Bell Ball. A loud and exciting show with stonking sets from, amongst others, Take That, S-Club, Raye, Alicia Keys and Rita Ora.
October 2023
My sixth season at the Thursford Christmas Spectacular, and a particularly exciting one as sound designer, as it was the first season with our new d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system. The highest resolution Soundscape system installed anywhere in the world, it has transformed the sound in the highly unusual theatre (with 40m wide stage!) and opened up a new world of creative possibilities. With a cast of over 100 and fabulous (and complex) choreography from Tracey Iliffe and her team, we were greatly helped by using TiMax trackers and Atlas spatial audio show control software.
September 2023
Back for a new season at the Royal Opera House, and a new studio too, replacing the much loved and much used Studer Vista desk with an Avid S6, and a full Dolby Atmos system with Genelec The Ones loudspeakers. We got it all working with minutes to spare to record Barrie Kosky and Tony Pappano's fabulous new production of Wagner's Das Rheingold - the first opera of a new Ring cycle that will be developed over the next few years. The following week we broadcast it live to cinemas across the world. And then a couple of weeks later it was a rather different kind of opera - Donizetti's comic masterpiece L'elisir d'amore - starring Bryn Terfel, Nadine Sierra, Liparit Avetisyan and Boris Pinkhasovich and conducted by Sesto Quatrini.
August 2023
A few days in Abbey Road Studio 1 and Angel Studios recording the London Philharmonic Orchestra and friends for an online concert for players of the video game Genshin Impact, conducted by Robert Ziegler. The music is packed with great tunes and lush orchestration created by Yu-Peng Chen and the HOYO-MiX team led by Yasunori Nishiki. For several years they have presented live and online concerts of the music, but for 2023 they decided to bring the orchestral players into the beautiful visual worlds of the game. So we recorded the music in London, and then the orchestra went to China to be filmed. The concert was released just before Christmas to great acclaim. It was lovely to work with such a top team, including engineer Mitsunori Aizawa, Ito Tsubasa, Kenta Higashiohji, Wang Jianmeng and my old friend Matthew Freeman.
June 2023
A couple more shows to finish the season at the Royal Opera House. Live to cinemas was Verdi's Il Trovatore, conducted by the incredible dynamo that is Tony Pappano, and a star cast including Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Ludovic Tézier and Jamie Barton.
And then we filmed, for future release, a Royal Ballet Triple Bill, with the world premiere of Wayne McGregor's new ballet (Untitled, 2023) with music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, alongside Christopher Wheeldon's homage to Leonard Bernstein (Corybantic Games), and Kenneth MacMillan's gripping exploration of an identity in crisis in Anastasia, set to Martinů's 6th Symphony.
June 2023
A great way to start the summer: at Wembley Stadium, mixing FOH sound for 80,000 partygoers at the Capital Summertime Ball. Working with the amazing team at Southby Productions, we had a total of thirteen DiGiCo mixing consoles, and a fabulous d&b audiotechnik system combining ten arrays of SL-series with the in-house V-series system. It sounded huge!
April 2023
I've recently completed two live-to-cinema productions for the Royal Opera House - each of which went out to about 1,000 cinemas worldwide in 5.1 surround sound. First was Puccini's Turandot, conducted for the first time in the theatre by Tony Pappano. I engineered this, with Simon Kiln producing.
Next up was the Royal Ballet's new version of Frederick Ashton's production of Prokofiev's Cinderella, with breathtaking new sets, costumes, lighting and projections. I produced and engineered this, and will be editing and mixing it for streaming and DVD release in the next few months.
April 2023
I've recently complete production on recordings of ABRSM's new Bowed Strings syllabus. This was a big project - recording 153 pieces in total. It's been a pleasure to work with a bunch of top-class musicians and friends - Ruth Rogers, Martin Cousin, Simon Blendis, Saoko Blendis, Katherine Jenkinson, Meghan Cassidy and Mary Scully. Recordings were made at Perry Vale Studios, South London.
January 2023
Satya Hinduja's Essence project has kept me busy the last few months. Read all about it here.
November 2022
Another gig for Sky TV with the Len Phillips Swing Orchestra, Britain's busiest big band. This was at The Stables, Wavendon, Milton Keynes, and featured solos from Mica Paris, Gary Williams, Julia Sullivan, and Ben Holder. I handled both the live sound for Front of House, and the multitrack recording for Christmas broadcast on Sky Arts. After the gig the recording was mixed by the brilliant Chris Traves, whilst I headed back to Thursford.
October 2022
Back once more as Sound Designer for the Thursford Christmas Spectacular. Read all about it here.
October 2022
I recovered from Covid just in time to do two live-to-cinema shows from the Royal Opera House - Verdi's Aida, conducted by the Music Director of the Royal Opera Sir Antonio Pappano, and Mayerling, conducted by the Music Director of the Royal Ballet Koen Kessels.
September 2022
It's been fun filming and recording a collection of songs with Katharine Fuge & Laetitia Fédérici. We filmed in the Recital Room at Trinity School, Croydon, where both Kathy and Laetitia teach. Here's a gorgeous song by Gerald Finzi, and there are lots more by various composers on Kathy's Youtube site.
July 2022
Released this month is Love is like a Violin on Nimbus Records, a fabulous collection of light music originally played by Max Jaffa, and recorded on Max's old violin by Simon and Saoko Blendis. I produced, engineered and edited this CD, recorded in Milton Court Concert Hall at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
With a finely judged recording and Simon Blendis’ own booklet notes, this is a charming and packed recital that offers a rich variety of lighter pleasures in arrangements that have been subjected to some necessary editorial decision-making. The two performers evoke the aura of past times effectively not through imitation or assumed period techniques – no glutinous Palm Court slides here, not that Jaffa perpetuated those – but rather through a serious, respectful but humorous and witty look at Jaffa’s repertoire. - Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International
I do not intend to go through every single piece presented here – all I will say is that they are all absolutely delightful and quite perfectly played. It is a genuine joy to hear this style of music recreated with such skill and obvious affection. Although the main plaudits will go to Simon Blendis for his effortlessly stylish playing much credit must go too to his wife Saoko Blendis on piano. For the most part the keyboard parts are simply accompaniments in the most literal sense of the word but these still require the player to be alert to every little ebb and flow and harmonic side slip. On the few occasions something more virtuosic is required than Ms Blendis is fully up to the task. She also created the cover design of the CD booklet which is a nostalgic delight in its own right. Credit as well to producer/engineer Mark Rogers who has created a very sympathetic and appropriate environment for this recording. The balance between violin and piano is expertly judged which neither dominating the other. Finally, how refreshing that a label such as Nimbus Alliance is willing to support a release such as this which is going to be something of a niche release – albeit one of the highest quality. - Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International