Tag Archives: local 6

Orchestra News

San Francisco Ballet Ratifies 2-Year Extension Agreement

On November 26, 2020, the musicians of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, members of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), ratified a two-year extension agreement of their 2015-20 agreement that runs from December 1, 2020, through November 30, 2022. The musicians and management had steady communication from March until reaching agreement in late November; a mediator was engaged for the final two months of negotiations.

The orchestra agreed to approximately 77% of the 2019-20 base salary, plus an additional lump sum payment of $3,925 each year, in the form of either an IRS Section 139 Disaster Relief Payment (as long as the disaster declaration is in force), or a 403(b) employer contribution. The Disaster Relief Payment is not considered “wage replacement.” Nevertheless, such payment, coupled with the season guarantee, results in annual compensation equal to approximately 83% of the 2019-20 annual guarantee.

All orchestra members, contracted substitutes, and extras were paid fully through the end of the 2019-20 season. The 2019-22 IMA and COVID-19 Side Letter, which qualifies them for Tier 4, were ratified along with this agreement.

Books-Resources, Products

Through the Door: A Horn-Player’s Journey


Dave Krehbiel’s fast-moving memoir, Through the Door: A Horn-Player’s Journey, relates the adventures of a young musician who uses his musical talents to cover up his scholastic shortcomings. In so doing, he finds himself, miraculously, in the career of his dreams—playing principal horn for Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco symphony orchestras. With intelligent humor, Krehbiel, of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), inspires us to face, without fear, whatever lessons are on the other side of the doors the universe opens to us.

Through the Door: A Horn-Player’s Journey, by Dave Krehbiel, self-published.

mendieta
Member Profiles

Anna Maria Mendieta

Classical Harpist Treads New Paths Playing Tango

Anna Maria Mendieta has no trouble recalling the dayspring of her lifelong love affair with the harp. At age five, her arts-loving parents (her mother was a pianist and accordionist; her father played classical guitar and saxophone) played a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, and the overture swept her away.

mendieta

“They told me the story of Romeo and Juliet and I remember being so amazed because you can really hear it in that music, and there’s this moment where everything becomes silent and all you hear is this beautiful harp. And that’s when I knew: That’s what I want to play,” she says. “I sat there with my ear right up to the speaker and I had them play the recording for me over and over again.”

Unlike Shakespeare’s infamous star-crossed lovers, Mendieta’s love was requited not too much later. Her parents started her on the piano while they figured out the logistics of harp studies and found her a teacher. “My father was a great collector of instruments. He had all sorts of things, even a harpsichord! But no harp,” she says. By age seven, she had begun studying the Salzedo method with Israeli harpist Efrat Laury-Zaklad at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. “I took my first lesson and I knew; clearly, there was never any wavering from that.”

The towering physicality and visual beauty of the harp—and the highly-aesthetic Salzedo method in particular—have always been part of the appeal for Mendieta. The visual sleight-of-hand that keeps the audience’s eyes on the graceful gestures of the arm and away from the foot pedaling action that determines the harp’s key is a dance in itself. (“Now you know the secret to the long gown,” she slyly whispers.) For her, the connection with dancing offers a certain familiar comfort: alongside their musical studies, Mendieta’s parents encouraged their children to study dance. The family’s Spanish heritage made flamenco an important point of cultural connection (one of her sisters is a professional flamenco dancer), but it was after Mendieta’s career as a professional harpist was well-established that she found a new love: the tango.

Like so many people, Mendieta found the tango through the compositions and performances of revolutionary Argentinian composer and virtuoso bandoneon player Astor Piazzolla, whose nuevo tango style changed the face of both classical music and tango. Falling in love with the music and its accompanying dance, Mendieta sought out harp arrangements of Piazzolla’s work. Finding none, she wrote directly to Pablo Ziegler, Piazzolla’s former pianist and the preeminent composer and performer of nuevo tango, to see if he had anything that might work. No luck. “I said, ‘Just send me what you have and I’ll figure out how to play it,’” she says.

“People told me it wouldn’t work, there was just no way. ‘You can’t play tango music on a harp, it’s too chromatic,’ they said. And it was a real challenge,” Mendieta recalls. “Astor Piazzolla’s music is so incredible. He uses his instruments not only as melodic instruments but as rhythm instruments. It took me many, many years to figure out how to do that on the harp. I had to change my technique in order to get the sounds. To play the chromatics, I figured out different ways to bend the notes.”

Mendieta realized that the methods used by jazz harpists to use the pedals of the harp strategically to create slides and slurs could provide a basis for this new technique. This, of course, went against everything she had ever learned about the pedals: be as gentle and quiet as possible so as not to lose the clarity of notes; move feet with subtlety so as not to distract from the hands. Suddenly, she found herself using the pedals like a pedal steel guitar player would: bending her notes in real time while also getting creative with enharmonics, using them to substitute for chromatics when an extra note was needed without a pedal change. “I was also incorporating percussive sounds, like the chicharra sound of the violin [a method of playing the violin string above the bridge for a cricket-like percussive effect], but I had to figure out how to make all those imitative sounds. I just basically made it all up,” she says.

Mendieta’s creativity in making the tango work on the harp resonated with many of Piazzolla’s former orchestra-mates and contemporaries, who found echoes of Piazzolla’s own rule-breaking in this new tango frontier. Mendieta has played with a number of these musicians and has spent significant amounts of time in Argentina both studying and teaching, alongside names like Pablo Ziegler, Javier Cohen, and Daniel Binelli.

A surprising moment in Mendieta’s touring concert and show, “Tango del Cielo,” comes when the male principal dancer walks over to the harp and takes her hand, leading her to the dance floor. “Oh, the audience loves that, they really don’t expect it,” she laughs. Learning to dance the tango was, for Mendieta, crucial to understanding the deep feeling and rhythms of the music.

Even as she treads new paths in the tango field, Mendieta has not abandoned the music that made her fall in love with the harp in the first place, as the harpist for the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera and a fixture throughout the California classical scene. Her work with the Sac Phil, along with regular performances in San Francisco and Los Angeles, has made her a rare AFM triple-carder: Local 12 (Sacramento, CA), Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA), and her original Local 6 in San Francisco, with whom she first signed on as a teenager.

Union membership has not only afforded Mendieta performance opportunities, networking, a safety net, and the knowledge that there were people who had her back, but also a wealth of opportunities to develop personally as both a performer and a business professional through the extensive continuing education programs on offer. “Local 47 in particular has that great new building and they offer so many interesting workshops—all kinds of things, from technology training to tax information, as well as every kind of music you can imagine.”

With COVID threatening the livelihoods of so many artists (and the venues in which they play), Mendieta sees the AFM as crucial in helping musicians stay connected, sharing ideas and inspiration and outside-the-box thinking, and lobbying for survival.

Personally, Mendieta spent the shutdown finishing the Tango del Cielo album that she’s had on the back burner for years. It was partially completed but never quite finished due to near-constant performances and teaching.

“I just had not found the time to finish it,” she says. “So early on, when it seemed like things might be closing for a week, maybe two, I decided to take the opportunity to go into the studio and finally finish recording my parts, and I’m so glad I did because mixing them—which I did digitally with my producer—gave me something to do in those early weeks, and I did finally get the whole thing finished and released!”

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

  • Lyon & Healy harp (Salzedo Model)
  • Horngacher harp
  • Premier harp strings (“I like the clarity of their strings.”)
  • Portastand Minstrel music stand (“It’s so lightweight, it’s solid and sturdy, plus it’s small so it doesn’t block the sightlines of the harp during performances.”)

Orchestra News

San Francisco Symphony Agrees to Contract Modifications

At the end of October, San Francisco Symphony musicians ratified a 25-month contract modification that runs from October 18, 2020, through November 26, 2022.

The orchestra’s salary was first reduced to 90% of regular wages beginning in April 2020 and then to 65% of regular wages beginning in September. With the new contract modification, the pay rate for October 18, 2020, through January 2, 2021, was approximately 70% of pre-COVID wages; a slight pay increase began on January 3.

Further salary changes taking place from January 3 through the end of the contract agreement will be dependent on the number of musicians who retire under the new Voluntary Retirement Incentive Program. Through that program, musicians over age 60 with at least 25 years of service receive a lump sum payment of $75,000 if they choose to retire.

Under the modified contract, musicians will be scheduled for a maximum of four services per musician per week. Musicians will not be required to repay instrument loans for the life of the agreement.

While San Francisco Symphony musicians recognize the organization’s financial challenges as a result of COVID-19, they feel that the extent of the salary reductions is unjustified. The contract modifications were negotiated under the threat of force majeure; as a term of this agreement, management agreed not to invoke force majeure due to COVID-19.

The symphony’s musicians are represented by Local 6 (San Francisco, CA).

Member Profiles

From Jazz to Tango, Violinist Jeremy Cohen Plays Fearlessly

In tango music, there’s an important concept called “la mugre,” literally, “dirt” or “grime,” but referring to a figurative scintilla of grit—a bit of rawness and emotion in both the music itself and the dancing. If your tango isn’t tinged with adequate mugre, explains violinist Jeremy Cohen of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), it will lack the depth for which the genre is known.

Coming to tango a bit later in his musical life, adding it to his well-established repertoire of both classical and jazz music, Cohen found that the concept of mugre resonated well with him, giving a word to a feeling he’d had for quite some time—that a rigid culture of perfection tends to sanitize music itself. “The mugre is what gives the music its soul; that’s the good stuff,” he says. “You can’t fool anybody if you’re not coming from a place of real joy, and that means being able to play freely and without fear.”

That’s not, he is quick to clarify, to say that technique isn’t important. Having studied classical violin under legendary performer-pedagogues Itzhak Perlman and Anne Crowder, he puts strong value on knowing his way around a fiddle and a bow, but his circuitous route to serious studies included an extended stint in his grade school jazz band after a false start in the orchestra. “I was sitting with my legs crossed, so they sent me to the back. I didn’t like that, so I quit and joined the band instead,” he says. This was a minor infraction but one which stuck in the craw of the young Cohen, who found himself with a two-track career from the very beginning: studying classical music at Sonoma State in California with utmost seriousness while also playing casual swing gigs on the Russian River.

As his career developed, taking him the long way around from New York to Los Angeles via the road company of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, he eventually found his way back home to Northern California. Settling down in San Francisco, he pulled the parallel tracks closer together, performing with a number of prominent and diverse ensembles. Eventually, he formed his own Quartet San Francisco, an eclectic string quartet that explores the possibilities of string-forward contemporary music. Quartet San Francisco has won tango competitions, performed the music of everyone from Dave Brubeck to Michael Jackson, and snagged a handful of Grammy nominations in its nearly 20 years of existence. The quartet’s lack of self-imposed boundaries allows Cohen the freedom to explore genres and composers broadly, but also to take a deep dive into a single sub-genre or even an artist’s repertoire. “Really, we’re just expanding the roles of the modern string player; putting the strings front and center,” he says.

Cohen also heads up Violinjazz, a more straightforward does-what-it-says-on-the-tin jazz group, where he digs deep into the swing and big band violin repertoire, expanding beyond the better-known Joe Venuti and Stéphane Grappelli and into the work of Stuff Smith and Eddie South. Violinjazz is also the name of the Cohen’s publishing label, where he composes, arranges, and produces sheet music from the broader repertoire of American string music.

The freedom that comes from all of these outlets to simply play what he loves to play and create what he loves to create is a major key to Cohen’s success, he believes. He works to impart this joy and fearlessness to his own students, whom he primarily teaches via StringMasters, his custom-built online teaching platform. A few years back, Cohen found himself, like so many other teachers, frustrated trying to teach remote lessons via a patchwork of glitchy apps, juggling payment systems and video conferencing software, and emailing PDFs of sheet music. So, alongside a student who also worked as a web designer, Cohen built his own dream platform from scratch, giving him the flexibility to modify it for his own needs as a teacher, both in terms of real-time lesson capability and scheduling, payment, and other administrative necessities. Teachers can pop pieces of sheet music onto the screen from a massive library and mark it up in real time onscreen. Students can re-watch their recorded lessons at their leisure. Both can maintain an easy-to-manipulate personal library of sheet music and recordings. “It’s designed for serious musicians who want a higher lesson quality and the ease of just one platform,” Cohen says.

Though the StringMasters platform (www.StringMasters.com) predates COVID by a few years, it did come in awfully handy when Cohen, who also serves as the artistic director of string, and his fellow teachers all found themselves unable to teach lessons in person. Not only has the number of individual teachers using the platform skyrocketed, a number of prestigious summer programs used it this past summer as their instructional base. The dynamic system allows for constant improvement even now: Cohen is currently working to add instant video playback—the closest replica of playing duets currently possible with web capabilities.

Private instruction is what’s keeping most of Cohen’s time filled during the ongoing pandemic shutdown, but he credits the AFM with providing a career’s worth of job security leading up to this point. He rattles off his locals with the same jovial familiarity with which he rattles off old bandmates: “I was a member of 802 in New York, and then after I went to LA, I was a member of 47, and now I’m a member of [San Francisco Local] 6,” he says. He reminisces of a time when San Francisco was a die-hard union town and blue-collar and white-collar workers were ready to go to the mattresses on each others’ behalf whenever it was needed. Union-busting on a nationwide scale is a major factor, he believes, in the current political climate. “How many of these people out here have no backup?” he asks. “They just see things getting worse and worse; the destruction of the entire middle class in their lifetimes, but instead of protection, they got NAFTA.”

Even in a political climate that is hostile to organized labor, Cohen sees the way out as growth. “We not only have to survive [as a union], we have to figure out a way to come back bigger,” he says. “The path back means more than just survival; it means growing the base.” For him, though, that’s an easy sell, especially in a part of the country with a notoriously high cost of living. “Without a steady job in San Francisco, like with the symphony or the ballet or the opera, making a living—especially raising a family—without the auspices of union work is not possible.”

Jeremy Cohen’s Violin Has a Life of Its Own

Jeremy Cohen plays a violin that sings out a tango as comfortably as it squeaks out a mouse’s revenge.

Originally made in 1868 by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, the premier French luthier, the violin spent half a century in the capable hands of Lou Raderman. Raderman has one of the most extensive discographies in American popular music and played with everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra. As concertmaster of the MGM Orchestra from 1939 to 1969, Raderman and his violin can be heard in every MGM movie soundtrack for a third of a century, from The Wizard of Oz to Singin’ in the Rain, to Ben Hur, Doctor Zhivago, and hundreds more.

“Every time I’m watching an old movie or listening to a record and I hear it, I know it right away—that’s my fiddle!” enthuses Cohen.

MGM also made the iconic Tom and Jerry cartoon, where this violin played a crucial (and cheeky) role, which Cohen loves to gleefully demonstrate: a resonating twang, the unmistakable sound of a plucked whisker.

Cohen purchased the iconic violin from Lou Raderman’s widow, Sally (who was also a violinist with the MGM orchestra).

Orchestra News

San Francisco Opera Modifies Remaining Contract

In mid-September, musicians and management of the San Francisco Opera agreed to modifications for the remaining three years of their contract, including a salary cut of 50% for the current season. The new terms are effective retroactively from August 2020 through July 2023. “Had we rejected these cuts—including 50% of our weekly salary for the fall season and deep but graduated cuts for the ensuing two years—we would immediately have been without any income or the guarantee of health coverage,” wrote the musicians, members of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), in a press release.

Musicians maintain that their compensation should not be tied to ticket sales, and that management is not sharing equally in the sacrifices. The opera has reduced its budget from $78.6 to $44 million due to the pandemic.

New Releases

Tango Del Cielo

Anna Maria Mendieta

Harpist Anna Maria Mendieta’s newest album, Tango Del Cielo, is a collection of Argentine tango and Spanish classical music. The album includes arrangements for harp and orchestra featuring works by Astor Piazzolla, Pablo Ziegler, and more. These orchestrations have been created by award-winning composers, including Jorge Calandrelli; pianist for Piazzolla, Pablo Ziegler; and Jeremy Cohen. The album was recorded at Skywalker Sound with Grammy Award-winning engineer Leslie Ann Jones.

Tango Del Cielo (Tango of Heaven) brings Mendieta’s technical prowess to the forefront. The album synthesizes years of advocacy and partnership between Mendieta and some of Piazzolla’s closest colleagues and artistic collaborators, thus presenting a groundbreaking new vision for both tango music and the harp repertoire.

Mendieta is a member of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), Local 12 (Sacramento, CA), and Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA).

New Releases, Products

Between the Tracks

Steve Eulberg

Steve Eulberg, a member of Local 1000 (nongeographic) and Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), delivers his ninth solo recording in what is a return to his acoustic guitar roots.

Between the Tracks is an all-instrumental album featuring fingerstyle guitar and light percussion, with styles including acoustic folk, bossa nova, ragtime, blues, and Americana.

After having his cancerous thyroid removed in 2013, Eulberg turned to his guitar for healing, processing, and expression. In today’s contemporary blizzard of twisted language and misinformation, he says he “recognizes the need for stillness and reflection and offers a collection of eloquent fingerstyle instrumental compositions.”

Featuring his artistry on nylon and steel-string guitars with light percussion, this self-produced project was mastered by Grammy-winning engineer Charlie Pilzer, also of Local 1000.

Member Profiles

Back to the Age of Swing: Working to Preserve the Big Band

Trombonist Rex Allen of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA) has been a big band leader for 50 years and has cultivated a following in the genre of vintage jazz.

 

Rex Allen came of age at the height of rock and roll, but he pursued more unconventional music as a teenager in the 1960s—the sound of swing. He took a serious interest in Dixieland jazz, popular from the 1920s through the 1940s. In 1968, he joined the union with an eye on a professional career as a trombone player and bandleader. After 50 years of making music and 44 years with Local 6 (San Francisco, CA), he recently became a Lifetime member.

Allen had the best introduction to the big band era. His parents owned a vast collection of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Benny Goodman albums. He became a member of the New Orleans Jazz Club of Northern California and the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society.

A trombonist and vibraphonist, Allen counts among his influences legends Jack Teagarden and Lionel Hampton, the latter with whom he worked at the 1986 Monterey Jazz Festival. “I played the trombone, of course—I wasn’t going to play vibes with Lionel Hampton,” he laughs. Allen’s brass skills are well known. In a 1985 reader’s poll in Jazzology, he tied with Bill Watrous.

In 1972, he was making a name for himself when he got a call from Jimmy Diamond, bandleader in the New Orleans Room at the Fairmont Hotel. “I was young and still learning,” he says, but it turned out to be an important connection. Allen absorbed swing techniques from top-level players  who would later make up his big band and Swing Express, among them Dave Black and Jim Rothermel of Local 6.

He’s been associated with legendary bands, The World’s Greatest JazzBand of Yank Lawson and Bob Haggart, and from 1979 to 1987, he worked with Bob Crosby’s Bobcats, saying, “It was a dream come true, working with my idols!”

In 1977, Allen became co-leader of The Rex Allen/Bob Neighbor Big Band and from 1976-1977, he was featured solo trombonist for the estate-sponsored Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

When a move to Los Angeles didn’t pan out, Allen returned to San Francisco and has made his home in nearby San Rafael ever since. He formed the all-star quintet Rex Allen Swing Express in the 1980s and led the Gene Krupa Orchestra tribute band for six years. The Rex Allen Big Band made three national tours for Columbia Artists, including the Big Band Salute to Glenn Miller, in 1993.

According to Allen, there were three waves of big band music created by the music industry to satisfy the nostalgia market. The first, in 1968, he says was a direct result of the book, The Big Bands, by jazz writer George T. Simon, a well-known chronicler of the swing era. Allen says, “It reached an audience that listened to big bands in their youth, but in the late 1940s and 1950s they were too busy raising families to buy records or tickets. Years later, they wanted to return to the music they grew up with.” Harry Connick Jr., ushered in a second wave, from 1989 into the 1990s. The last wave, in the 2000s, was less about music interpretation and more about the visual elements of jazz—artists staging an atmosphere for their shows—what Allen calls “costume jazz.”

Allen has worked alternately as a trombonist and vibist in all-star bands for jazz festivals and events around the country. Working steadily earned him a union pension which, he says, “You don’t necessarily consider early in your career—I didn’t pay attention—but it’s made a huge difference now.”

As a bandleader, Allen says, “You are emcee, musician, and manager. You end up reprogramming your best stuff because it works—the best tunes, the best variation of tempos through a set. It’s a formula you want to break, but often can’t. It’s an artistic dilemma.”

Still, through the years, he’s learned to keep it fresh—with vocal presentation and featuring his players as great soloists, creating new arrangements of old tunes—and swing-style charts on pop tunes—while staying within the idiom, he notes. He recalls Tony Bennett, whom he booked in San Francisco, telling him, “You have to reinvent yourself.” “‘A subtle evolution in packaging’, that’s how he described it. Tony definitely went with the times,” says Allen, adding, “He became an elder statesman.”

A semi-retired Allen sums up his work in big bands: “To promote, preserve, and protect the music of the great swing era.” His new show, America Swings Again, is a two-hour production commemorating the music, personalities, and broadcasts. “Most people who listen to our band know what to expect. Play it the way it was played in 1938.”

michael walden
Member Profiles

Narada Michael Walden: Evolution to Success

michael walden

Drummer, producer, songwriter Narada Michael Walden of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA) has written hits for some of the biggest names in the industry.

Narada Michael Walden of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA) was just 21 when he was discovered by the avant-garde guitarist John McLaughlin and joined the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Taking over for the illustrious drummer Billy Cobham was a pivotal moment in Walden’s career. The experience defined his life on many levels, from visionary, genre-blending new music to the spiritual quest it would take him on. McLaughlin introduced Walden to a guru, Sri Chinmoy, who gave him the name Narada and who taught him not to judge himself too harshly. “The only person you need to compete with is yourself. Be the best you,” advised Chinmoy.

At 64 years old the top-flight producer, songwriter, and musician, who has produced 57 number one hit songs, and received three Grammys, and an Emmy, is still humbled by life. His joie de vivre is compelling as he talks about success and contentment. “Did you have a good time?! Did you accomplish what you wanted to? I played with John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana [of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA)], Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder [of Local 5 (Detroit, MI)]. I had fun, I had children—all the things we’re here to do,” he remarks.

Walden calls Evolution, his 16th album with the Narada Michael Walden Band, “a celebration of delight.” On it, he revels in late-in-life fatherhood and pays homage to musicians who have inspired him. “I’m calling out their names,” he says, “A lot of high-spirited dancers came out. Curtis Mayfield touched my heart. Rick James’ spirit, just crooning, came out. Rock blues came out. Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, and Jeff Beck all came out. The 1978 dance music came back around again.” The album includes two covers: “Freedom” by Richie Havens and “The Long and Winding Road” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Growing up in the 1950s, between Detroit and Chicago, Walden listened to everything. “Even before Motown, we had beautiful music. There was Curtis Mayfield, Johnny Mathis, Patti Page, Jimmy Smith, and Dave Brubeck. Anything that was cool, even country, like Patsy Cline—we loved,” he says. Heavily influenced by Ray Charles, as a kid he carried around his live album What’d I Say. “Every song was so deep. Groove, all the while his feet beating under the piano. So much command, control, and discipline,” he says.

Walden’s debut album back in 1976, Garden of Love Light, featured tracks representative of his experience with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But Atlantic Records was looking for commercial hits so Walden’s follow-up work moved toward the dance-pop and soul music for which he’s become most famous. He says his hit from that album, “I Don’t Want Nobody Else (to Dance with You)” saved his career. As a producer and songwriter, he’s collaborated with musicians across the charts, notably Stevie Wonder, Stanley Jordan of Local 802 (New York City), Whitney Houston, Steve Winwood, and Mariah Carey, while scoring many hits of his own. With Jeff Beck he wrote and played drums on the seminal album, Wired, earning each a Gold Album.   

Walden makes his home in the studio, but still loves live venues. On occasion, he plays with his old friends, like Aretha Franklin. Recently, in New York City, for the first time they performed the hit he co-wrote and produced for her, “Freeway of Love.” Walden expresses awe for that generation of singers, especially from the gospel tradition. “It’s a power that’s ordained, almost transcendental,” he says. 

He describes Tarpan Studios as a nesting ground for developing talent. Part of his genius as a producer is freeing up the artist so he can capture the emotion. Walden creates ambiance, the perfect lighting, the vibe, getting to what he refers to as the deep heart space to touch the emotion. He says, “The timing, how it feels, the tuning, how it goes down—the emotion is critical. A few great singers absolutely love the sound of their voices. And that’s what makes it easier for me as a producer. They just love the sound that comes out of the speaker.”

In the ’60s, ’70s, even into the ’90s, music had air, making space for artistry. “These days, it’s got to be mastered to the point where it’s super powerful, which often takes air out of the music. Going fast,  intense and big sounding.” Walden remembers what Quincy Jones of Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) taught him long ago: “If it’s number one it’s number one for a reason”—which these days means keeping up with cultural shifts, being competitive in the industry, all the while preserving an art form. 

A longtime session musician, Walden is a strong advocate for musicians’ rights. He regularly contracts union musicians. “We want to make sure we protect ourselves and artists and songwriters get paid,”  he says, noting the solidarity and order the union brings to the industry to keep musicians in business.    

Through his own foundation, he’s broadened his advocacy work. The Narada Michael Walden Foundation fosters music education for children by providing instruments for private lessons and music programs and camps. In addition to Christmas shows and jams throughout the year, he invites students into the studio for sessions on recording and writing, where they participate in singing or drumming classes. For many of the events, Walden calls on high-profile friends, like Sting, Dionne Warwick, and Martha Reeves to work with kids. “It’s a confidence builder. We both win.” 

In a life that’s come full circle, with Evolution, with his family, and the foundation, Walden has found his center. Invoking the guru, he tells students, “Be the best you.”