Lawrence Manchester
By Mike Giuliano
You may not have heard of Lawrence Manchester, but you've probably heard his work. A 1995 graduate of Peabody's Recording Arts and Sciences degree program, Manchester has become a noted film score recordist and mixer in the past few years.
Moviegoers who enjoyed the classical music-drenched The Red Violin, the Apollo 11 moon landing-themed Australian comedy The Dish, and the brutally distinctive take on a Shakespeare drama provided by director Julie Taymor's Titus Andronicus know that these motion pictures wouldn't be nearly as effective without the soundtrack savvy of a recording engineer like Lawrence Manchester. He's versatile, and not just in terms of the various types of movies he's worked on. Manchester also has worked on albums ranging from the heavy metal band Aerosmith to the jazz performer Diana Krall. Whatever the musical style, he knows how to make it sound like it should. When he's not in a film or recording studio, you're likely to find his work in all sorts of other places.
In Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, he was involved in the world premiere of John Corigliano's Vocalise with the New York Philharmonic. He wore a tuxedo and was part of a performance that involved the direct participation of his electronic sound engineering. In a Broadway theater, he was the recording engineer for frequent collaborator Julie Taymor's The Green Bird. And on your TV screen, he handled the sound for Doritos and Kraft Hamburger Helper commercials.
Besides all that technical work, he's got some creative credits, too. Manchester composed the scores for a couple of theater productions, Furious and Now She Dances!, and a yet to be released film, This Thing of Ours. And as a musician, he played the drums on the movie score for Object of My Affection and the guitar on the movie score for Wide Awake. This man at the mixing board is obviously a very busy guy.
"Engineering as a profession is a go-between the creative and technical sides," this 29-year-old, New York-based Peabody grad says from Santa Barbara, California, while taking a break from a New Age album for which he's the engineer. "It's all related to communication." Projects like this album involve working closely with musicians, and sometimes providing some creative input of his own.
Manchester says the degree of studio involvement "depends on the relationship you have with them and how much input they're looking for. Some performers have a specific idea and can fully realize it on their own and you're there to facilitate it. Others can't articulate it and look to you for more creative input. Having a musical background, I can communicate more directly if they want to talk about harmony and chord structure."
He credits Peabody with sharpening his musical and technological skills, but adds that some things must be learned on the job. In his case, that means the high-pressure realm of recording studios.
"The most important thing to learn is diplomacy. Working with other people, other artists, you need to give them what they need, and in a diplomatic manner. The creative process is a difficult one with a variety of people collaborating. In the middle of all that, there's a need for negotiation sometimes. There's no way to develop those skills without doing it in the real situation. I'm there to facilitate their artistic vision in a mechanical sense."
Lawrence Manchester evidently gets along with other people, because his career as a recording engineer has taken off in the last few years. "It's all word of mouth. You start to develop a reputation on your own," he says of how one project leads to the next.
Two of the creative talents with whom he's worked on multiple occasions are director Julie Taymor and film composer Elliot Goldenthal. He's currently working with both of them on a movie biography of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo starring Salma Hayek that's slated for release next year.
That Mexican-set drama takes Manchester a long way from his own biographical origins in Maine, where he grew up as a young drummer thinking he might become a Broadway musician some day. He chose Peabody, because "I wanted a chance to hone my percussion skills." While studying percussion, for which he received his Bachelor's degree in 1994, he also honed his recording skills. And to help pay the bills, he was a freelance musician around Baltimore, playing everything from weddings to jazz gigs. He knew he wanted to move to New York City, but wasn't entirely sure what he'd do in the city that he and his wife, actress Rebecca Kendall, still call home.
"Even upon leaving Peabody and having this recording degree and really starting to get a feel for New York City and finding my place there, I still didn't know what it was I wanted to do. I had this great education in classical music, but wanted to get back into jazz and go to the next level." So Manchester worked to get a Master's in Jazz from New York University in 1997. However, "I also got into the recording studio scene," he says. "The recording career took on a momentum of its own."
For Lawrence Manchester, his job is much more than pushing buttons on a control board. "It's inspiring to be part of the creative process, and get a feel for the personalities (of the composers and performers with whom he works). It's a real privilege to be on the inside and be a part of it."
He likes the variety of musical jobs, but has a special fondness for movies. "I really get excited about the film scores. I like the medium. I like collaborating with the composer, musicians, director and producers, and to see how the music fulfills a larger purpose within the film. It's challenging, but also very rewarding."
That sense of challenge and artistic satisfaction was built into Peabody's Bachelor of Music in Performance and Recording Arts and Sciences degree program from the beginning. The program was founded by Alan Kefauver in 1983, and has since added a Master's track in Recording and Acoustics. The Bachelor's degree demands Conservatory-level standards in the knowledge and performance of music with computer/electrical engineeering skills and hands-on experience of all kinds of digital sound production. It is recognized as the most sophisticated in the country. People with this unqiue combination of engineering/musical skills are in such demand that sometimes companies try to lure students away to work for them even before they graduate.
When asked to give a sampling of where graduates from the program work, Kefauver runs down an off-the-top-of-his head listing: "Matt Lyons runs his own business as a sound consultant to the Consumer Hi?Fi Industry. Brian Schmidt works for Dolby Labs in California developing applications for the PC. Xiadong Zhou works for the Chinese desk of Voice of America in Washington D.C. Jeff Madison has a job with RPG Acoustics, Gonzalo Rodriguez is with Maryland Sound, and Jared Weissbrot is with NPR." And that's just a small sampling. Peabody's recording grads are spread out throughout the entire sound industry.
When the program began in 1983, Hans Fantel of The New York Times prophesied that "Peabody's lucky students will be equally at home with violins and vector analysis." Judging by careers like Lawrence Manchester's, that prophesy has been amply fulfilled.