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News Details
| Super Audio CD Version of Genius Loves Company Wins Best Surround Sound Album Grammy | February 17, 2005 |
| 17 February 2005, Los Angeles - Last Sunday, the 47th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, posthumously recognised the creative talent of Ray Charles on his 250th and last album Ray Charles: Genius Loves Company. This inspirational album, which was released on Super Audio CD and CD by Concord Records, won a total of eight Grammy awards, including Album and Record of the Year. This was the first time Charles has received these top awards in his long and prestigious musical career. The album, which was released simultaneously on CD and SA-CD, ranks alongside Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983) and Carlos Santana’s Supernatural (1999) as being one of the most highly awarded albums in Grammy history. Alongside the big two Grammy categories, this year saw for the first time NARAS, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, recognizing the increasing influence of multi-channel audio recording by creating a dedicated category - Best Surround Sound Album. Establishing another first, Ray Charles: Genius Loves Company is the inaugural winner in this new category. Ray Charles: Genius Loves Company is an album featuring the late Ray Charles in classic duets with many of today’s leading recording artists, including Norah Jones, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, Diana Krall and Elton John. The album has sold over 4 million copies in the US in less than 6 months since its release, making it Ray’s most commercially successful album ever.
At the awards ceremony, Herbert Waltl, one of the album’s producers and owner of mediaHYPERIUM studios in Los Angeles (Philips’ SA-CD reference studio for North America) received two of this year’s Grammys for his work on the Ray Charles: Genius Loves Company: Album of the Year and Best Surround Sound Album. Herbert Waltl explains the background to the decision to release the album on Super Audio CD. “When I first discussed making a duet album with Ray it was very important to him that he recorded ‘on the cutting edge’. Ray was an inventor in many ways, creating many firsts and breaking cross-genre boundaries. This paved the way for many younger singers and musicians who followed him. It only makes sense that Ray should receive this first Surround Sound Grammy,” explains Waltl. “I felt that during our initial discussions he was very excited about the production and the creative possibilities Surround Sound has to offer. Technical details were not of much interest to him, but the sound quality of DSD was. His key question was always ‘How does it sound?’ “I’m glad that Concord Records, an advocate of the SA-CD format, agreed to release this historical album on SA-CD. Ray’s genius deserves the best,” commented Herbert Waltl. The complete list of Grammy Awards includes Record of the Year; Album of the Year; Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals: Here We Go Again (Ray Charles & Norah Jones); Best Pop Vocal Album; Best Gospel Performance: Heaven Help Us All (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight); Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist: Over The Rainbow (Ray Charles & Johnny Mathis); Best Engineered Album, Non Classical and Best Surround Sound Album. For more information, please contact: mediaHYPERIUM Herbert Waltl Tel: +1 310 378 1078 email: Herbert.Waltl@mediaHYPERIUM.com Philips Consumer Electronics Jeannet Harpe Tel: +31 40 273 5677 email: jeannet.harpe@philips.com SA-CD Press Centre Bob Charlton Tel: +44 20 7559 9891 email: bob@scribe-pr.com |
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