Audio Industry Leaders Support the Seventh Annual P&E Wing GRAMMY® Week Celebration at The Village Recording Studios in West Los Angeles
Annual Gathering Recognizes Achievements and Contributions
of the Music Industry’s Production Community
The Recording Academy® Producers & Engineers Wing® will celebrate its seventh annual GRAMMY® Week event honoring two-time GRAMMY® Award winner Neil Young for his commitment to excellence and ongoing support for the art and craft of recorded music. The event will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2014, at The Village Studios in West Los Angeles. GRAMMY Week culminates with the 56th Annual GRAMMY Awards® on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014, airing live on the CBS Television Network, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Premier sponsors of the P&E Wing GRAMMY Week event include Platinum Sponsor AUPEO! (www.aupeo.com) and Gold Sponsors AVID (www.avid.com), Westlake Pro, (www.westlakepro.com), DTS (www.dts.com), Shure (www.shure.com), Iron Mountain Entertainment Services (www.ironmountain.com), Music Marketing (www.musicmarketing.ca), and Presonus (www.presonus.com). Additional sponsors will be announced shortly.
“The Producers & Engineers Wing provides a voice for the producers, engineers, remixers, manufacturers, technologists, and other related creative professionals who work, usually behind the scenes, in the recording field,” states Maureen Droney, Senior Executive Director of the P&E Wing. “They constitute a community that is passionate about delivering music to consumers that sounds as good as possible and that delivers the full emotional impact that its creators intended it to have. As we all know, the transition to digital music in recent years has, in large part, led to certain setbacks in the standards of sound quality available to music consumers. Although that trend is reversing, there is still much work to be done.”
Droney continues, “Our honoree this year, Neil Young, is a music icon who has long been a passionate spokesperson for better sound quality in recorded music, and who is himself pioneering new and innovative ways to deliver music that sounds as close as possible to the studio quality that artists hear when they’re recording. Therefore, we are thrilled this year to be able to acknowledge our appreciation for the extraordinary artistic and sonic integrity that he has maintained throughout his long and illustrious career. The P&E Wing’s annual GRAMMY Week Celebration is an important signature event for our community, and it is the contributions of our sponsor partners, all of whom support the art and craft of recorded music and are dedicated to excellence in their areas of expertise, that make it possible to produce this event. Thanks to them, we look forward to presenting the kick-off evening for another exceptional GRAMMY Week.”
As the Producers & Engineers Wing 2014 honoree, Neil Young joins an impressive list of past honorees: Chris Blackwell, T Bone Burnett, Tom Dowd, Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, Jimmy Iovine, Quincy Jones, Arif Mardin, Al Schmitt and Jerry Wexler.
About Neil Young
Young’s career began with his earliest recordings as a member of the Squires in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1963. He rose to prominence as a solo artist with classic albums such as 1970’s After The Gold Rush and 1972’s Harvest, and through work with bands such as Buffalo Springfield (Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield Again); Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (American Dream, Déjà Vu); and Neil Young With Crazy Horse (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere). He has also directed and released films through his production company Shakey Pictures, including Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and the documentary CSNY/Déjà Vu (2008). His most recent release, Neil Young With Crazy Horse’s Psychedelic Pill,shows an artist fully grounded and firmly rooted in his work yet constantly evolving and living in the moment.
Young continues to push artistic boundaries by releasing Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 1963–1972 in a variety of formats, including Blu-ray, thus allowing fans to continue to receive new Neil Young archival content as it becomes available. He has received numerous awards and accolades throughout his career including an Oscar nomination in ’93 for his song “Philadelphia” from the film Philadelphia. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in ’82, and has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — in ’95 for his solo work, and in ’97 as a member of Buffalo Springfield. In 2014, he will debut the highly anticipated Pono, his new high fidelity audio system. Young’s philanthropic work is as renowned as his musical legacy. He was one of the original founders of Farm Aid in 1985, and continues to be an active member on the organization’s board of directors. Each October, he and his wife Pegi organize and host the Bridge School Concerts, a benefit for the Bridge School that he and Pegi helped found. The school ensures that children with severe speech and physical impairments achieve full participation in their communities through the use of assistive technology and the development, implementation and dissemination of innovative educational strategies. These weekend concerts have drawn an international array of musical artists and have raised significant resources for the school. For more than four decades, Young has set a standard of artistic integrity and iconoclastic creativity and his achievements have been matched by his unwavering humanitarianism. Neil Young is a shining example of how music people offer their creative gifts to the world, and how they also give back through their commitments to charitable endeavors.
