Michael Caplan is pumped. Sitting in the control room of Horizon Recording Studio with studio owner — and Elm City Music record label partner — Vic Steffens the day after the release of their label’s first record, Adrenaline Mob’s Omertà, Caplan tracks its sales progress on his iPhone.

“It’s the number 33 album on iTunes. We were born March 13, 2012. Trans World sold 110. They’re predicting 333. We’ll be on the charts next week — we’ll probably end up going in the Top 100,” Caplan says to Steffens.

Caplan returned to New Haven after 30 years living in New York, most of that time working in A&R, or artists and repertoire, for Sony. In that capacity, Caplan signed major acts like Living Colour, Allman Brothers Band, Tower of Power, the Hasidic reggae rapper Matisyahu, and Chicano power-rock trio Los Lonely Boys. His work in the record business began when he was 16 and got a job at Cutler’s Records, Tapes & Compact Discs in New Haven.

“I met Vic when I first started working in New York. I purposely sought him out because I thought one day I might want to come home and would tie in with the biggest and best studio in Connecticut,” says Caplan. “My son went off to college so I felt the time was right.”

With Caplan’s track record of having discovered and developed artists that have sold in excess of 30 million records, Elm City Music secured a deal with EMI, home of The Beatles. Along with distributing Elm City Music releases, EMI agreed to become a contributing financial partner, putting up money to sign and market acts.

According to Caplan, their deal with EMI “makes us the first nationally distributed Connecticut label ever.”

Their first signing was Adrenaline Mob, a heavy metal supergroup comprised of former members of Avenged Sevenfold, Symphony X, Disturbed, and Dream Theater.

The label plans to offer a wide range of music. In the pipeline are records by a Brooklyn hip-hop group and, according to Caplan, an L.A.-based rock band “with a principal me and Vic think could be the next Freddie Mercury.” Caplan adds that they would “love to make Connecticut acts part of our thing.”

I ask Caplan what he looks for in a potential signing.

“For me, it’s always about the singer and the song. It comes down to melody. Sometimes people — Vic is not guilty of this — but people who engage in the craft of making records get too caught up in the importance of the mechanics of it,” Caplan says.

Caplan offers an example from his experience as an A&R man back in the early 1990s when Nirvana’s explosive success upended the music business. He recalls the manager of Living Colour — a black rock band led by guitarist Vernon Reid that Caplan had discovered — attributing Nirvana’s success to the kick drum sound achieved by recording engineer Andy Wallace.

“He said, ‘That kick drum sound is so seductive,’ when it had nothing to do with it at all! It was a cultural revolution,” Caplan recalls with a chuckle.

“I believe a record should be as well made as possible but at the end of the day it’s about the singer and the song,” says Caplan.

“When we looked at this band Adrenaline Mob — our first band — they were members of other bands that had notoriety so they already had a base. It’s good if you can find artists that already have a head start,” says Caplan.

Steffens says that while having a band whose members are known quantities is a plus, Adrenaline Mob will succeed on the strength of frontman Russell Allen — “he’s one of the best singers in that market out there” — and their songs. Their debut album, Omertà, “has at least four really great singles,” Steffens says.
As I talk with Steffens, Caplan checks his iPhone for sales updates.

“Know how many iTunes albums we sold yesterday? 1,066 albums — they’re projecting 2,300 for the week. Dude, we may hit 7,000!” A few minutes later, he has more news: “Best Buy, first day — 526!” Then, “Now Best Buy’s taking it national to all 350 stores!”

“I feel Connecticut — and New Haven in particular — contributed to me being in music. There is a distinctive sound,” Caplan says.

Connecticut, according to Caplan, has an affinity for “a lot of southern rock, progressive rock, Chicago and horn bands, Tower of Power.” Caplan was a big fan of Tower of Power when he worked at Cutler’s and got to work with the band years later at Sony.

“When Tower of Power albums came out the first week they would chart Top 200 in San Francisco and
Oakland where they’re from and in Hartford/New Haven,” says Caplan.

“There are two separate things we’re dealing with: Elm City Music and Vic’s studio Horizon. The reason we’re together is I think there are going to be a lot of crossed paths here. If we find something great locally, which we do want to do, we’ll develop it here in the studio,” Caplan says.

The music business has changed in the last 20 years. Steffens refers to it as the “democratization of the record business.” Digital technology has put professional recording tools within reach of everyday musicians.

Steffens notes, “There used to be a wall you would hit but couldn’t cross unless you had big money” to finance sessions in nationally known studios. “But now you can cross that line if you have talent.”

The Adrenaline Mob record, for example, was mostly recorded in guitarist Mike Orlando’s basement.
Social media has revolutionized the marketing end of the business.

Caplan notes, “It costs less to get 600,000 people on Facebook” than to get six radio stations to play a record.”

“We’ll be using both old and new where appropriate. One of the great things about Adrenaline Mob is that drummer Mike Portnoy has 600,000 Facebook friends. It’s great to be able to direct-market to those people,” says Caplan.

For heavy metal bands like Adrenaline Mob, he adds, radio is still important and Elm City Music plans to push that avenue, also.

“Be nimble and do whatever is necessary to get your message out,” Caplan says. “And don’t balk at the changing of the times.”

Michael Caplan, left, and Vic Steffens. Photo by Hank Hoffman.

Where recording engineer Vic Steffens’ Elm City Music record label partner Michael Caplan can say, “See you later,” if he’s not taken with a band or their songs, Steffens doesn’t have that luxury. If they’re running through their material in his Horizon Recording studio in West Haven, “I have to deal with the issue of how to make a good record. I have to create something no matter what,” Steffens says, interviewed along with Caplan in his studio control room the day after the first Elm City Music album has been released.

In his three decades of recording, Steffens has worked with national acts like the Blues Brothers, Lita Ford of the Runaways, and Sly Stone, as well as engineering recordings for many of the most prominent local performers — “Beehive Queen” Christine Ohlman (Steffens’ sister), Mighty Purple, James Velvet, Anne Marie Menta, and others. But it’s not always seasoned professionals walking through the doors.

Steffens tries to “listen to the totality of it” while looking for weak spots that need to be shored up.

“I look for how well the bass player and drummer play together. Do they listen to each other? Is the guitar player playing in tune? Is he playing too much or too little? How does the rhythm section in general work because you have to get all these basic elements of the band to sound really good and make sure they’re not smothering the singer and the song,” says Steffens.

All too often, according to Steffens, bands spend seven and a half hours of their eight-hour recording sessions “messing around with drum fills and guitar fills. They throw the singer out with 15 minutes and tell him to do the song and the poor guy is just floundering out there.”

“I want them to feel like they’re on a gig and it’s one of the better gigs they ever had,” explains Steffens. “I want them to think I’m the audience and I’m here to love them, not to hate them.”

Steffens knows about being on gigs. In the 1970s, he was the drummer for the Scratch Band, one of Connecticut’s most popular groups. The Scratch Band also featured guitarist G.E. Smith of Saturday Night Live fame and Steffens’ sister, Ohlman. Steffens started dabbling in recording at Trod Nossel Studios in Wallingford; Trod Nossel owner Doc Cavalier managed the Scratch Band.

After his stint with the Scratch Band ended, Steffens took a weekend course at the Business Academy of Music, run by Marty Kugel, the producer of the Five Satins’ doo-wop hit “In the Still of the Night.” Kugel introduced Steffens to Paul Leka, owner of Connecticut Recording studio in Bridgeport. A songwriter, producer, and arranger, Leka — who died last year — had hits with “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” (Steam) and “Green Tambourine” (Lemon Pipers). Steffens worked at Connecticut Recording for a couple of years as engineer and eventually studio manager before founding Horizon Recording in 1988. Originally in Wilton, Horizon moved to its current West Haven location in 1990.

“I’ve had the benefit of working with people who’ve sold millions and millions of records,” Steffens says, referring to Leka and producer and songwriter Michael Chapman (Blondie, The Knack, and many more). “The experience of being around these guys and watching how they do what they do is irreplaceable.”

When Steffens started, he was recording to tape. He transitioned to digital formats gradually starting in the mid-1990s. Steffens still has a working tape machine. But most musicians — even if they rhapsodize in poetic terms about the glories of analog sound — don’t want to spring for the $200 cost of a reel of two-inch tape, nor do they want to forego the editing perks of working in the digital realm. It’s possible in a recording program like the industry standard Pro Tools to cut and paste parts of several different takes together to get one song. But that’s not Steffens’ preferred working method.

“I always try as much as possible to have them play it right. It doesn’t mean there won’t be a flaw here or there that we fix but I’m not a big one for ‘We’ll record it four times and slap pieces of it together.’ I just don’t believe in it,” says Steffens.

Steffens tailors his approach to the needs and musical temperaments of the performers he’s recording. One hot-button issue is recording to a “click track” — essentially a metronome.

“Some bands sound horrible when you ask them to play to a click track. Some bands really need to record to a click. If the drummer can’t play to a click track, the last thing you want to do at a recording session is ask him to learn. The time to learn that is when you’re at home, not here,” says Steffens.

“Keith Richards won’t record to a click track. (Drummer) Steve Jordan says, ‘I am the click track and if I’m not good enough, hire somebody else,’ continues Steffens. “I like that attitude. I’m sure he’s not perfect every minute of every day but I bet it sounds perfect.”

Steffens’ partner, Caplan, interjects to note that sometimes variations in tempo can improve a song.

“Sometimes I like the sound of organic speed-up. On the first Radiators album is a song ‘Doctor Doctor’ where it just speeds up and it feels so good,” says Caplan.

Steffens concurs: “It could be the magic of the record. Who said everything has to be perfectly in time? I never made that rule.”

It’s human nature, Steffens, says, for people to use the tools at hand. Caplan notes that a singer, knowing the recording engineer has pitch-correction software, may “just sing it and go, ‘Okay, fix it.’ As a matter of fact, it’s even worse because being able to hear pitch correction in a recording is so popular — the T-Pain effect (after R&B singer T-Pain who featured the effect prominently) — that they just get close and then fix it.”

“They didn’t do that in a Frank Sinatra session,” says Steffens. “They had three mics recording 45 or 50 musicians including vocalists and if it wasn’t great, they didn’t even think about using it.”

Usually, Steffens records three or four takes of a song with an emphasis on getting a solid drums and bass foundation. But when he worked on his sister’s record The Deep End, “We tracked the whole thing and that was basically the record,” says Steffens. “It just so happened we had a singer who could deliver that. When she walks up to a mic, it’s a take. She doesn’t know how not to do a take.

“Which, honestly, is the way it used to be. When you were doing Frank Sinatra, Sinatra did not know how to not do a take, or Ella Fitzgerald or any of those people,” says Steffens. “There is an inverse curve between recording technology and musician competence. The more technology we have, it seems, the less competent the musicians are.

“But a great take — if you get a little buzz and the hairs on your neck stand up — it doesn’t hurt,” declares Steffens.

“I don’t have a problem with using the technology. I have a problem with it replacing competence. What happens is people get lazy in their performances and think you’re going to fix that,” contends Steffens. “But that laziness not only affects the technique of the performance but affects the emotional content as well. People give a lackluster performance and think you can inject emotion.

“They haven’t made that plug-in — the Aretha Franklin plug-in that suddenly makes everything in tune. But Aretha’s not always in tune. But you don’t mess with it because it’s Aretha Franklin. I have heard an awful lot of great vocals that had some out-of-tune notes in them — The Beatles, Rod Stewart,” opines Steffens.
He lays some blame for the current fetish for perfectly in-tune vocals at the feet of American Idol host Simon Cowell.

“His sense, which he tries to impose on the world, of what makes a vocalist is just horrible,” declares Steffens. “We used to call those people ‘lounge singers.’ We never would have heard Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or Neil Young if Simon Cowell had his way.”

While technology has moved to the point where professional recording tools are widely affordable, Steffens still emphasizes, “It comes down to your ability more than ever because you still have to have the ears and the insight. You can’t buy that at Guitar Center.”

Encouraging performers to get great takes is just part of it. On his end, Steffens has to make the right technical choices.

“Everything is dependent on what you hear. You’ve got two ears stuck on the sides of your head. They’re there for a purpose,” says Steffens.

Experience has taught Steffens there no hard and fast rules. He has heard some singers “sound horrible” vocalizing into expensive mics like the Neumann U47, which is considered one of the “holy grails” of vocal microphones. And some rock singers, Steffens says, “knock it out of the park” when wailing through a relatively inexpensive Shure SM57 or SM58.

“You listen to it first, get a little feeling, think ‘this will work for this.’ Follow your heart. If that doesn’t work out, you have to be intelligent enough to say that didn’t work and punt and do something else,” says Steffens.

Among the highlights of his studio experience, Steffens mentions working with rock and soul legend Sly Stone in the late 1980s. At one point, Stone started singing an impromptu version of his hit song “Family Affair.”

“I almost melted. It was so ridiculously soulful I didn’t know what to do. Well, I did know enough to record it,” Steffens recalls. “Everybody knows how troubled Sly is, and he was every bit that troubled in that period of time. But still, on any given moment he could knock you across the planet with something so great that you wondered where it came from.”

Recording The Deep End in 2009 with his sister was another high point. The record was cut mostly live in the studio.

“Listening to the whole thing laid out before you without any real technological intervention, it was like the old days. And that really affected me because it reminded me that no matter what people hand you to do there is still a certain core group of essentials that affect us, at the top of the list being the general emotion of the take,” says Steffens.

“A lot of days in the studio, people don’t play all that emotionally because they’re trying to execute parts. I’m really against that,” says Steffens. “To me, it’s all about playing music, not executing parts. You can execute parts flawlessly and it might not add up to music.”

Left to right: Theatre 4 stage manager Sarah Iannarone, Mariah Sage, director Maryna Harrison, Jane Tamarkin, and Rebecka Jones (seated). (Photo by Judy Sirota Rosenthal)

Sitting in the seat of a darkened theater, I rarely give thought to anything other than the performance I’m about to see. There is no acknowledgement in my mind about the process behind the presentation of a theatrical performance. I do not consider the hours of rehearsals, the staging, the writing of a script, or the psychological preparation of character development. I simply sit and wait for the actors to take me away to the world of the story.

The founders at Theatre 4 consider all these things and more. And after having spoken with a series of artistic directors, playwrights, and actors, I have a much greater appreciation for that which must occur in order for opening night to be not just a success, but to happen at all. This is especially true when the performance is a world premiere. It’s hard work. It’s highly collaborative and everyone from the actors to the lighting director has a job to do as part of a well-managed team. Theatre 4, a small New Haven-based theater company founded by Rebecka Jones, Mariah Sage, and Jane Tamarkin, is taking on a big challenge this spring. The company, established in 2007, has had great success with its Acting Out events.

“Those events are often sold out and people love them,” says Tamarkin.

Now, however, Theatre 4 is moving more toward commissioning new works. Its principals tell me they love the energy and excitement of working alongside playwrights. The company is currently presenting the world premiere of award-winning playwright George Brant’s Salvage, which the company commissioned. The play is described thus on the Theatre 4 website: “Danny’s sister and mother have just laid him to rest and now find themselves racing against time to rescue his prized possessions from the family basement before a flood hits. Enter Danny’s high-school sweetheart to lend a hand – but is she here to pay her last respects or to keep Danny alive forever?”

The play, which was written specifically for Jones, Sage, and Tamarkin, was inspired by Henry James’ The Aspern Papers and is directed by Maryna Harrison. “There are very few plays written for only three women,” explains Sage. “So we had to create one for ourselves.” “The three of us have never actually acted in a play together,” adds Tamarkin.

But the company’s principals want to do more than just act in plays.

“By … commissioning playwrights to write plays that include at least one female character, we are creating a body of work which we intend to contribute to the American theater,” Tamarkin says. It is an involved process that, in this case, began when Brant agreed to write for Theatre 4.
“I don’t get hung up on whether or not I’m writing for men or women,” says Brant. “I’m writing for people.”

Theatre 4’s Mariah Sage, Jane Tamarkin, and Rebecka Jones rehearse George Brant’s Salvage. (Photo by Judy Sirota Rosenthal)

“I’m a big rewriter,” says Brant. “I’m always trying to make the play the best it can be.” In July 2011, the Jones, Sage, and Tamarkin “spent about a week with George,” Tamarkin says. “A draft was created and during (a) workshop the actors read, with the director present, and George sat and listened. He took notes. And the next day he would produce new copy.” Rehearsals for Salvage began at one location and then moved to the performance venue. Because Brant lives in Ohio, they communicated much of the time via e-mail and video chat. Before opening night, Brant was to travel to New Haven to once again lend his assistance. As opening night neared, the company worked to ensure that Brant’s thought-provoking story line would be successfully communicated.

With Salvage, Brant hopes “that audiences will enjoy the emotional nature of the play, its dark humor, and its many twists and turns. And if they leave the play with a determination to sort through the guilt and regret in their own lives in order to release themselves from any long-standing impediments to their happiness, well, then that would be wonderful too,” Perhaps the next time you sit in a darkened theater you’ll take a look around and imagine the hard work that went into entertaining you.

Visit t4ct.org for information about upcoming performances of George Brant’s Salvage.

Edwin Austin Abbey, The Play Scene in “Hamlet” (Act III, Scene 2), 1897. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Collection. This work is on view at the Yale University Art Gallery. Image courtesy of YUAG.

By David Brensilver

After his arrival at Yale University in 2008, David Kastan kept “discovering new things” related to the school’s Shakespeare-related resources.

“I think it was partly that I was new to the community that this seemed so astonishing to me,” Kastan said in an e-mail. “Other people knew about it and maybe took it a bit for granted.”

According to Kathryn Krier, program coordinator for Shakespeare at Yale, the semester-long, campus-wide celebration of those vast resources, was Kastan’s idea.

“He’s one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars in the country,” Krier said of Kastan, the university’s George M. Bodman Professor of English.

Asked which elements of the university’s Shakespeare-related resources have most impressed him, Kastan, who spent 20 years at Columbia University before joining the faculty at Yale, said, “For me, given my interests, it is the amazing collection of Shakespeare-related books, many of which are on display in the Beinecke now. But now, having seen this all come together, it is both the quality and range of what is on offer campus-wide.”

The Shakespeare at Yale experience does not require a scholarly prerequisite.

“What is wonderful,” Kastan said, “is that all of this is open to the community, and even to a public outside of New Haven. It was imagined as a way to bring people to Yale to discover some of what is here to be enjoyed.”

Grauman Marks’ photo of Meryl Streep in the Yale Repertory Theatre’s 1975 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is part of the Whitney Humanities Center’s Shakespeare at the Yale Rep exhibition. Image courtesy of Yale Rep.

“Between the holdings of the Beinecke Library and the Elizabethan Club,” the university’s dedicated Shakespeare at Yale website points out, “Yale has the best collection of early printed editions of Shakespeare of any university in North America. These will be the centerpiece of a unique exhibition at the Beinecke.”

That exhibition, Remembering Shakespeare, which was curated by Kastan and the Beinecke’s curator, Kathryn James, “tells the story of how a playwright and poet in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England came to be remembered as the world’s most venerated author,” according to the Beinecke’s website, which indicates that the exhibition includes “works from the holdings of Yale University’s Elizabethan Club, Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale Center for British Art, and Beinecke Library.”

At the Yale Center for British Art, “While these visions did appear”: Shakespeare on Canvas explores visual artists’ interpretations of Shakespeare’s works.

The exhibition of paintings from the center’s permanent collection “focuses primarily on depictions of Shakespeare’s comedies” while also drawing “on comedic elements from the tragedies,” YCBA communications coordinator, Kaci Bayless, said.

The YCBA website explains that “the promotion of the playwright as the ‘immortal bard’ was seized as an opportunity to foster a British school of history painting.”

“The eighteenth-century understanding of poetry and painting being sister arts helped to create a close relationship between literary works and the visual arts,” Christina Smylitopoulos, a postdoctoral research associate at the YCBA, said in an e-mail.

From the above-mentioned “British school of history painting” came what the YCBA website describes as “a new genre: the Shakespearean conversation piece.”

“The conversation piece — a group portrait, normally small-scaled, though often depicting the sitters in full-length and set in a domestic interior or a garden setting — became a fashionable trend in eighteenth-century portraiture,” Smylitopoulos said. “David Garrick … (the) actor and Drury Lane Theatre manager, commissioned many theatrical conversation pieces from leading artists (which) were often shown in new exhibition spaces like the annual shows at the Society of Artists … the Free Society of Artists … and the Royal Academy of Arts … Through the efforts of Garrick, Shakespeare’s plays flourished on the London stage in adapted forms and Garrick recognized the value of Shakespearean conversation pieces as both advertisements for his many productions and as commemorations of especially favored roles and scenes.”

Smylitopoulos, who curated “While these visions did appear”: Shakespeare on Canvas with Eleanor Hughes, the YCBA’s associate curator and head of exhibitions and publications, said, “One of the interesting aspects of the exhibition is that in includes representations of several types of Shakespearean interpretations. For example, artists treated Shakespearean themes in history paintings, portraiture, small-scaled scenes destined for illustrations of Shakespeare’s works, as well as more imaginative works which took a Shakespearean theme or character as a starting point, but may have then made departures from the text. … Shakespeare could inspire adaptations — theatrical, poetic, and artistic — and these adaptations became part of a flourishing aesthetic discourse.”

Gerry Goodstein’s photo of James Earl Jones and Harris Yulin in the Yale Repertory Theatre’s 1980 production of Timon of Athens is part of the Whitney Humanities Center’s Shakespeare at the Yale Rep exhibition. Image courtesy of Yale Rep.

Complementing the YUAG installation is Abbey’s iconic painting The Play Scene in “Hamlet,” which is on permanent view in the gallery and is often incorporated into the organization’s education programs.

Shakespeare’s plays, of course, have long been part of the Yale Repertory Theatre’s diverse programming.

“Producing Shakespeare and other pieces in the more classical repertoire is directly related to our mission,” Rachel Smith, the theater’s associate director of marketing, said.

“Since Yale Rep’s inception,” Smith said, “we’ve produced some really well-known Shakespeare shows.”

A Whitney Humanities Center exhibition of photographs and promotional artwork called Shakespeare at Yale Rep celebrates those productions.

A poster promoting a 1921 Yale University Dramatic Association production of Twelfth Night. Yale Poster Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

The Yale Rep’s contribution to Shakespeare at Yale is a production of The Winter’s Tale, directed by Liz Diamond, who said she believes that Shakespeare, in this particular work, “requires us to awake our faith to the possibility of redemption … on every level.”

To do so, Diamond said, “He relies on the … magic of theater.”

The whole of Shakespeare at Yale, Kastan said, offers the region’s residents and visitors to the area “a terrific opportunity to see firsthand what is always said: that Shakespeare is, as one of his contemporaries said, ‘not of an age, but for all time.’ The truth of that is here in New Haven.”

For detailed information about events, exhibitions, programs, and schedules, visit Shakespeare.yale.edu.

“Through the art program,” the newsletter indicates, “patients are empowered as active partners in their own healing. Our new name, Arts for Healing, reflects the program’s role in the healing journey for children and families.”

In the May 2010 issue of The Arts Paper, Yale University student Cynthia Weaver wrote, “Since its inception as part of the hospital’s Child Life Department in 2003, the Arts & Enrichment Program has explored each avenue of the arts, nurturing and comforting over 4,000 hospitalized children and their families each year. The Child Life Department, established in 1967, plays a critical role in reducing fear and anxiety, improving the experiences of hospitalized children through the use of age-appropriate educational, therapeutic, and creative programming and activities. … A wide range of activities including performances, workshops, art activities, story-times, theater, and more are offered to patients, parents, siblings, and visitors.”

The above-mentioned newsletter explains that “the arts … have a measurable impact on physical health. Mind-body research provides evidence of the link between what we think and feel and how our bodies function. This link lends credence to what artists intrinsically know — that the arts support healing.”

Writing for the New Haven Independent in May 2011, Christine Saari reported that “Yale-New Haven Hospital has received (National Endowment for the Arts) support for the Child Life Arts and Enrichment Program Digital Storytelling Project, which brings professional artists to teach hospitalized youth how to create digital stories. Through interactions with artists, young patients who are either living with chronic illness or who experience a lengthy or difficult hospital stay, learn arts skills and produce work that reflects their perspective on living with illness.”

The Arts for Healing newsletter indicates that the program was “awarded a Learning in the Arts grant for 2013 from the National Endowment for the Arts for its digital storytelling program” and that “Arts for Healing is (otherwise) sustained through philanthropy.”

A version of this story was published in March in the New Haven Independent.

Carol Jantsch. Image courtesy of Sue Burrough.

Jantsch earned her bachelor of music degree from the University of Michigan after “becoming the first female tuba player in a major symphony orchestra,” the news release indicates.

Tubist Paul Krzywicki, who is a faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music, said, “I think anybody who has won a job recently has the closest touch with the audition process — not just the job itself but the competition that’s out there. Playing changes all the time, as does the audition process. It’s great when students have someone who won a job very recently — that’s the best information they can have. What sets Carol apart from many is that she’s very disciplined, very intelligent, and very focused. If students can approach the instrument with the kind of discipline and thoroughness she has, they’ll be better off. She has a good perspective of the instrument, both from solo and chamber music and an orchestral standpoint. She’s a well-rounded, thorough musician.”

According to her website (caroljantsch.com), Jantsch “has appeared as a soloist with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra, and the United States Marine Band, among others.”

In 2009, Jantsch released Cascades, a collection of original works, transcriptions, and arrangements for tuba and piano.

A version of this story was published in February in the New Haven Independent.