Reservoir
Music
By Peter Aaron
...Warm
and beautiful are words that have been used over and over again
to describe the sparklingly pure sonics of Reservoir’s recordings;
indeed, the imprint’s albums are revered worldwide for their
inviting, truly “live” feel, a sound not heard enough
in jazz since the 1950s and ’60s glory days of the Prestige
and Blue Note labels. In fact, for the €rst several releases, Feldman,
who produces and supervises all of the sessions himself, actually
worked with fabled Blue Note engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Now, however,
he records the majority of Reservoir’s output with Jim Anderson
at Manhattan’s crack Avatar Studios. So, for someone who studied
medicine instead of audio production, are there parallels between
the worlds of record-making and intestinal analysis?
“I
think so,” says Feldman, who grew up in Kingston and discovered
jazz in high school via Dave Brubeck and Stan Kenton. “In
good medicine and good music, there’s a level of professionalism
and competency you have to have; you have to do it until you get
it right for things to pass the test. The great musicians we’re
lucky enough to work with always impress me with the way they work
to get the music right, and I try to carry that attitude over into
my medical work.”
Those
musicians seem to feel pretty lucky about the situation, too. “The
thing about Mark is that he’s doing this because he loves
the music,” says guitarist Peter Leitch, who’s released
eight albums on Reservoir. “He doesn’t try to make you
record stupid things to try and have a hit record. He has a really
good set of ears, but he’s not a producer that interferes
with the music; he trusts that the musicians have it together enough
to do their job. Plus, he’s one of the few honest people in
the record business I’ve ever met.”
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