Those who were lucky enough to catch Frisell’s two week long residence at the Vanguard, were also fortunate enough to see the talentuous Eyvind Kang play his magic on the viola. But the really fortunate out there were blissed with a performance by Eyvind and his wife Jessika Kenney at Drom, where they played some of their new written and some improvised Persian-inspired music. The day after the show I was the fortunate one to be able to record their new music at EastSide Sound.
I’ve used my new and beloved Latvian JZ Black Hole microphone on Jessika’s vocal and a Beyer Dynamic MC740N on the viola and ran both through Neve-reissue Vintech X73 preamps and my MasterRoom II analog reverb to capture an intimate and marvelous performance of the two standing feet apart in same room and performing haunting music live for my lucky ears and my lucky mics.
Can’t wait to hear this record out in stores.

Luckily there are still musicians out there who care about “the sound” and are willing to experiment to get there. The incredibly talented Eyvind Kang is one of those and I was excited when he called me and told me he wanted to check out different mic positions and try something new and unusual. When I told my assistant to set up 5 mics he looked at me weird and thought it was overkill given it was just one instrument.
The sound we got was beautiful and rich!
The JZ Mic Black Hole was the close-mic of choice. I also had a stereo Rode NT 4 in front of the instrument, a few feet away, and then a Rode NT2000 and Fet 47 and a 414.
Recording one viola with 5 microphones on 6 channels was a new experience for me. Once I checked phase correlation, I mixed the signals and the result was impressing. Fascinating how different all the positions and mics sounded. Subtleties, richness and qualities of Eyvind’s unique instrument were beautifully captured in this way and when you complement that with his incredible playing the result was really stunning.
Look out for the one and only Eyvind Kang’s new record (produced by Jessika Kenney and himself) sometimes in 2010.