“Jack Renner, co-founder in 1977 with producer Bob Woods of Telarc International, died on June 19 after along battle with cancer. He was 84,” writes Susan Elliott in Sunday’s (6/23) Musical America (subscription required). “Renner’s training was in classical music and for a while he was a professional trumpet player. But his main interest was recording and, over time, he became one of the world’s most renowned engineers, with some 21 Grammy nominations and 11 awards to his credit for recordings by the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, and others. He and Woods were among the earliest to record digitally and perfected the idea of live recording via minimal microphones. Their output was wide and, especially in later years, included jazz. Telarc was bought in 2009 by Concord. Longtime friend and colleague Michael Bishop writes on his Facebook page: ‘… Jack started each and every session setup by listening to his 1978 Telarc recording of Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra—Stravinsky: The Firebird as a reference. This recording was the benchmark upon which he, and many other recording engineers including myself, continued to build upon through the years, always pushing the limits of technology to make better recordings.’ ”
Posted June 27, 2019
