Fifth Circle Audio

25/08/2025

And after closing night’s performance, that’s it for Summerfest 2025. Another great festival that I’m always happy to be a part of. Now the real work begins with post production on 16 shows (3 of which will end up on Medici), 2 encounters, and 6 concert preludes.

17/08/2025

Oh man. What a weekend of music. Friday, recording for future broadcast on the Medici web platform. Program was a great one featuring Inon Barnatan, Stefan Dohr, Zachary Wilder, Alexi Kenney, Nicholas Altateadt, Osmo Vanska and others… repertoire was: Schubert Auf Dem Strom, Schumann Piano Trio Op 110, Pärt Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, and finally the Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn and strings. The whole concert featured performances that are worthy of “all time” status. The Schumann and Britten especially were spectacular. Can’t wait to share once they are up.

The last night was truly special. Cecile McLorin Salvant’s “Book of Ayres” show. Performed with Emi Ferguson, flute, Sullivan Fortner, keyboards, Dusan Balarin, lute/theorbo, Yasushi Nakamura, bass, and Keita Ogawa, drums. Live archival broadcast mix for the festival. It was an unbelievable show- a mix of early music with jazz. Original songs as well as composers sort of reimagined like Handel and Dowland. Pictures from last night.

10/08/2025

Getting ready to record concert 2 of Summerfest that will end up on the Medici platform. Tonight’s program is Purcell, Britten, Tchaikovsky, and Arensky.

27/07/2025

Strap in- got two hours of Phillip Glass Etudes for piano tonight. Long show but I can’t wait.

26/07/2025

Opening night of Summerfest 2025. New monitoring this year- moved from the Neumann KH120s to PMC Result6s. Huge improvement in fidelity in the control room.

15/07/2025

Mixing an album in Atmos. Surround is fantastic, but height adds such a dimensionto the sound. This is what it’s about- feels like I’m in the middle of the church we recorded in. Should be out in the next couple/few months. Can’t wait to share- and if only everyone had access to the system needed for playback.

13/07/2025

This week’s fun. Fifth Circle Audio is recording the New Hollywood Quartet’s Summer of Angels Festival. 4 concerts at the beautiful Huntington Library’s Rothenberg Hall. Mics by Schoeps, Sennheiser, and B&K. Preamps by Millennia.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-07-12/new-hollywood-string-quartet-movie-music-huntingonps a

In San Marino, the New Hollywood String Quartet's annual festival pays tribute to the legendary Hollywood String Quartet with appearances by Leonard Slatkin.

23/05/2025

Last week of the concert season always seems to be crazy busy for me. This week has been no exception. Sunday, I recorded the last of the 2025 edition of the Hear Now festival- a concert focused on vocal chamber music. Performed at a church in Venice, the concert was recorded with a simple 4 mic setup and 3 video cameras.

Tuesday, I was at Monk Space in the Koreatown neighborhood of LA to record Alyssa Park’s solo/chamber performance. She had several pieces that were performed with the composers at the show. It was a special night for sure. Recording for this was a basic documentary show. But it was still high quality. Schoeps stereo mic for the sound capture, single camera sittingby me for video. (TBH, there isn’t the space for a large setup in there with the audience. )

Finally Last night (Thursday), I was back at Zipper Hall to record the shoot for the last show of Camerata Pacifica’s season. 4 cinema cameras and a full mic setup. I hung my LCR setup from the truss as well as the outriggers. Spot mics around as needed. I had my 2 Schoeps Collette tubes out with MK5 capsules out as well as my Sennheiser stands for my 8040s. The cello soloist got a vintage Schoeps stereo microphone as a Blumlein pickup on her instrument. Shoot was done with timecode. The Tascam 6400 was the clock master and we slaved my workstation directly to it through the dante system (see the glensound box) as well as all the video cameras to it via Ambient Lockit boxes.

26/04/2025

One more show after tonight… this is a pretty rocking piece. Having fun mixing it.

21/04/2025

This weekend’s rehearsal. Doing sound for Camerata Pacifica again. Running a Max patch and had to learn to manipulate IRCAM SPAT processing. The PA for this is written for a 7 channel system, but we have adapted it to 4 (quad) speakers due to the layouts of the 4 concert halls this will be performed in.

The performer has to wear two wireless microphones. One clips to the bell of the horn and the other is a headset mic. Both get used at specific points of the piece to emphasize different aspects of the performance.

In addition, we have to send time code to stage for the performer. The piece is written with time cues instead of traditional bars and beats. It’s pretty involved.

System is a DM7C console, a Mac running MAX/SPAT, Shure Axient wireless with a DPA4099 mic and a shure twinplex headset, and Meyer X40 speakers

14/04/2025

Been a busy couple of weeks- recording the first two shows of the Hear Now festival at 2220 Arts and Archives in LA as well as recording the Long Beach Camerata Singers Blue Note performance- which was a chamber choir with soloists doing a bunch of jazz standards.

Performances have been good and the recordings are turning out well. The choir show allowed me to use a combination of old and new techniques. I used my ribbon mics on the choir, but also some boundary mics to get a cleaner pickup on the voices. I also used minimalist techniques on the drum kit.

Hear Now is more of a documentary style pickup- a general array of mics with 3 cameras of 4K video.

12/04/2025

I’ve been waiting for awhile to share this one… I’m proud of the work we did on this- I recorded the audio in my studio starting during the pandemic. We did movements every few months as Alex finished them. The record rig was mostly AEA Ribbon Mics - N8 in the room and KU5A mics on the amps. Also a normal 57 on the Marshall amp to give a little crunch to the sound.

After the pandemic was behind us, we did the mixes as well for the album. Then more recently, we shot the video and I did the edit for the video. This is a pretty chill track. Please enjoy!!

"In the Company of Thoughts"Composed & Performed by Alexander Elliott MillerFilmed and Recorded by Ben Maas, Fifth Circle Audio"ANTIBODYPOLITIC" album on Ban...