Three alumni of SUNY Fredonia School of Music won a combined four Grammy Awards Sunday for their behind-the-scenes work, including one for Album of the Year.
Randy Merrill won for mastering engineer for “Harry’s House,” by Harry Styles and in the Best Engineered Album, non Classical category. The 1997 graduate works as senior mastering engineer at Sterling Sound in Edgewater, N.J.
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Charlie Post, who graduated the following year from Fredonia, shared a Grammy – his second – for Best Engineered Album, Classical, with fellow engineers Shawn Murphy and Gary Rydstrom and master engineer Michael Romanowski on “Bates: Philharmonia Fantastique – The Making Of The Orchestra,” by Edwin Outwater and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
John Kerswell, from the Class of 1988, was sound engineer on the winning entry for Best Opera Recording for Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” produced by David Frost for the Metropolitan Opera.
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“I’m so incredibly grateful for everyone who has trusted me with their art,” Merrill said in a statement. “It’s truly humbling to work with some of the biggest artists, musicians, producers, and engineers in the world. I’m thankful for the foundation I got through SUNY Fredonia and the SRT program.”
Merrill, who graduated from Fredonia’s Sound Recording Technology program in 1997, has 21 Grammy nominations and eight wins.
“We are so proud of Randy, Charlie and John, and we congratulate them on these latest achievements,” said Laura Koepke, interim director of the Fredonia School of Music, in a statement. “These talented individuals represent the best of the Fredonia School of Music and add to the long legacy of alumni accomplishments.”
Mark Sommer covers preservation, development, the waterfront, culture and more. He’s also a former arts editor at The News.