NEW YORK – Schoeps Microphones provided an interview with Larry Rock, who has served as audio director of the NY Philharmonic’s live, broadcast, and recorded performances since 1997.
More details from Schoeps Microphones (www.schoeps.de/en):
Veteran producer and audio engineer Larry Rock has served as Audio Director of the NY Philharmonic since 1997. In the time since, he has distinguished himself as a key architect of the preeminent orchestral institution’s sonic identity, producing award-winning work for the NY Philharmonic’s live, broadcast, and recorded performances. Rock’s career history, production philosophy, and preferred audio workflows are the subject of a new exclusive interview with Schoeps Microphones, wherein he details the techniques and equipment he has used to create some of the most celebrated orchestral recordings of the past three decades.
The NY Philharmonic has played a vibrant role in championing orchestral music of all stripes in the United States since its founding in the late 1800s. A major part of that has been its forward-thinking approach to programming that embraces a wide variety of genres, performers, and presentation formats – including free outdoor park concerts, showcase events for up and coming composers and performers, and live orchestration of beloved blockbuster films. Rock’s role in all of this is maintaining an extremely high standard of audio production that translates equally well across live, broadcast, and recorded mediums.
Capturing an ‘embellished sense of reality’, as he describes it, has been a key part of Rock’s success. This has led him to build off of the natural performance energy and individual details audible in the orchestra and utilize his command of recording and production techniques to create something that is an elevated experience for the listener. “There’s a concept of sound, of having the right balance, amount of presence, and a sense of ambiance,” he explains. “What is very important [to that] is the off-axis response of microphones because that’s where you pick up all the subtleties of the ambiance of the room.”
“Getting a sound that’s warm and clear, that is not at all harsh on the high end, that’s the objective,” he continues.
A Schoeps user since the early 1970s across a variety of mediums, Rock has made the Colette series a key part of his production workflows. He cites the microphones’ clarity and natural quality as being an important asset to orchestral recording – one that has helped shape the sound of the modern orchestra across the world. “Schoeps has worked out how to make condenser mics sound warm,” he states. “Everyone agrees they are the best.”
“There’s no question that the Schoeps in general, and specifically the Colette series, is a standard in the industry. What else can you say?”
For a related video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuFET76oIp4
For more about the NY Philharmonic, go to www.nyphil.org
