By TIM WHITELAW

OLD STREET, LONDON, England—Among a clump of down-at-heel housing developments in a nondescript London suburb sits the Church of St. Luke's, an elegant building originally dating from the 1700s. This modest building is the unlikely home one of London's most innovative news arts venues: L.S.O. St. Luke's, the new administrative center of the London Symphony Orchestra and the base for their Discovery education program.Extensive renovations on the church were completed in March of this year (it was little more than a ruin when work began in 1996), and the result is unique among London's myriad music venues, combining an arts outreach, education, and administrative center for the orchestra, with an acoustically brilliant recording and performance space.

Left to right: Michael Fine, JoAnn Falletta, Behzad Ranjbaran, and Kenneth Fuchs at the London Symphony Orchestra St. Luke’s recording session in September.

I arrived at St. Luke's on a crisp September morning to witness what was something of an historic occasion: the very first recordings ever to be made at this venue, which by a unique confluence of events involved no less than three distinguished graduates of The Juilliard School. Behzad Ranjbaran (MM '88, DMA '92, composition), a current faculty member, and Kenneth Fuchs (DMA '88, composition), the head of composition at the University of Oklahoma—both composition graduates—have joined forces with producer Michael Fine for this opportunity to record their work with the London Symphony Orchestra, enlisting the conducting talents of JoAnn Falletta (MM '83, DMA '89, orchestral conducting) (who premiered two of the Ranjbaran works), now an internationally renowned graduate of the school's conducting program. The occasion then was something of a reunion, since all three knew each other from their time at Juilliard. For me, it was a chance to go behind the scenes at a professional recording session, and to see in action an orchestra I've revered since hearing them blast out Star Wars soundtracks when I was an 8-year-old sci-fi buff.

Ranjbaran's sessions were first, recording a trio of works he calls "the Persian trilogy," comprising The Blood of Seyavash, Seemorgh, and The Seven Passages—a cycle of pungently evocative orchestral scores inspired by his native Iran and totaling some 80 minutes of dramatic, intricately textured orchestral music recorded over a marathon four sessions.

Kenneth Fuchs began his recording sessions with a brief speech to the orchestra expressing his admiration for them, which was followed by appreciative applause from the musicians. First up was An American Place, a quilt of clean, optimistic orchestral colors, enhanced by some fine playing from the orchestra's quicksilver brass section. Later, the orchestra was joined by soloist Thomas Stacy, principal English horn of the New York Philharmonic, for the recording of Eventide, a concerto for the unconventional combination of English horn, percussion, and harp.

Most modern orchestral recordings are in fact painstaking patchworks of edits and re-takes, which are seamlessly stitched together digitally to give the illusion of a near-perfect performance. Nevertheless, the degree of clarity with which the orchestra rendered the music on the first reading was breathtaking, but it is the conviction rather than the accuracy of the playing that Ranjbaran comments upon: "I was so impressed by the speed that the orchestra adjusted to the nuances early in the recording sessions… the solos were performed with incredible artistry."

In a departure from the usual setup, the St. Luke's control room lies below the main recording hall and the sessions are monitored through a video feed. Present in the control room were Ranjbaran and Fuchs, a publicist, and a technical staff. Being in the control room rather than the hall allows the composers and producer to hear the many orchestral details captured by the recording through the speakers, giving them a more realistic image of the recorded sound, including details such as harp passages and other sonic nuances obscured in live performance. At the mixing desk was recording engineer Jonathan Allen, whose recent recording credits include the scores for Lord of the Rings and The Hours. Aiding him was a recording assistant, who logged the takes on a computer and supervised the digital tape recorders. It was an efficient, professional, and surprisingly relaxed operation.

At the center was producer Michael Fine, a veteran of Koch and Deutsche Gramophone records, who now works independently. Equipped with a headset, a microphone, and a score, he worked in close partnership with Falletta, communicating over an intercom system. Falletta's role was especially important in a "record-rehearse" situation, since not only did she have to shape a performance from an orchestra who had not laid eyes on the music previously, but she also had to maintain consistent tempi over literally hundreds of takes to ensure seamlessness at the editing stage. On top of that, the intensive nature of the sessions meant her task required the most incredible stamina. As Ranjbaran points out, "JoAnn recorded 140 minutes of new music in four days. This is an incredible accomplishment by itself for any conductor."

As the sessions finally drew to an end, the composers departed and headed back to the U.S., exhausted but pleased. For Fine, however, the job had just begun; the stacks of digital audio tapes were boxed up in preparation for editing. The final recordings will be meticulously digitally woven together over the ensuing weeks by Fine using a "Sadie" digital editing platform, before being shipped to Germany for final mastering. Although the details of the final CD releases for the Fuchs and Ranjbaran works were yet to be finalized at the time of writing, it seems certain—with the combined efforts of a top orchestra, conductor, and producer collaborating on the work of two highly distinguished composers—the final recordings will be a proud achievement for all involved.

Tim Whitelaw earned his graduate diploma in composition from Juilliard last May. He is currently studying in London.