A walk through Fisterra

Solutions from Mergin Technologies, Pyramix and Horus, and DPA microphones are being used these days to capture a series of Bach concerts in Galicia.

A critically acclaimed young cellist from Alaska, an expert production team and a Grammy award-winning recording engineer are recording a series of concerts featuring Bach in 36 Galician churches these days.

Manufacturers of high-quality recording equipment receive numerous requests to loan equipment for a wide variety of projects and very obviously, most of them are ultimately rejected. This could have followed the same path, but when a student called the company requesting a Horus and Pyramix, interest was piqued in the team. Merging Technologies. However, Kyle Pyke is not just a student doing a Master's degree at Berklee College of Music's Valencia Campus, he has recently been living in Boston and another native of that city, Jesse Lewis, introduced Kyle to this project. In turn, Jesse had asked his fellow cellist, Dane Johansen, to be part of the team, since they had studied together at the Cleveland Institute of Music. This was clearly not the average student's project.

Recording in 36 buildings with completely different acoustics is a challenge for any artist, but even more interesting for the technical team. Even with an identical microphone platform, the results are more than likely to be very different from church to church.

From the outset the team made the decision to record in DXD (24bit/352.8kHz) as the best combination of high-resolution audio and easy post-production workflow. Horus was the choice to provide high quality mic preamps for the microphones DPA (d:dicate 4007A, d:dicate 4011F, d:mension 5100 Mobile Surround and d:dicate 4017B) and take care of A/D and D/A conversion.

Kyle has been assisted by another Berklee student, Beth Schofield. Beth is a graduate of the Royal College of Music and she takes charge of field recordings, interviews and Foley. She also assists Kyle on concert recordings that will appear in the documentary, as well as the music album.

The team aims to reach Fisterra on June 25 and performances of JS Bach's Six Cello Suites have been attracting large audiences in the historic churches and monasteries along the route to Santiago de Compostela. This is very appropriate, since these pieces had almost disappeared until their rediscovery last century by Pablo Casals, the world famous Catalan cellist.

The task of editing and mastering all material will benefit from the experience of Jesse Lewis. Asked why they had recommended Fusion products, Jesse commented that "capturing music is an unsatisfying process since recreating the actual experience of being there is impossible... Except with Merging's Pyramix and Horus. Working with DSD256 sample rates, mic preamps with the most amazing purity and transparency, top quality A/D converters... has been key."