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As the annual Grammy Awards continue to emphasize elaborate performances and celebrity hosts, more and more awards are being left out of the prime-time broadcast, including most of the production-related awards. To recognize the talent behind the faders, here’s our roundup of the people and albums that took home awards for production, engineering, and immersive audio.
The biggest and flashiest production award (and the only one to be included in the General Field) went to Canadian producer and songwriter Henry Russell Walter, better known as Cirkut. That’s no surprise, given his credits on Lady Gaga’s Mayhem (Best Pop Vocal Album), “Abracadabra” (Best Dance Pop Recording), and “Disease” (nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance). Walter’s other qualifying productions include “AEOMG” by Coco Jones, “APT.” by ROSÉ and Bruno Mars, “Big Sleep” by The Weeknd featuring Giorgio Moroder, “IT girl” by JADE, “A Little More” by Ed Sheeran, and “Red Terror” by The Weeknd. Beating out Dan Auerbach, Dijon, Blake Mills, and Sounwave, Walter thanked his co-producers, songwriters, and the artists he worked for, saying, “You trusted me with your vision. You could have worked with anyone, but you chose me.”
In the Classical category, Producer of the Year went to Elaine Martone for the third time in a row, bringing her total count to seven Grammys (plus one Latin Grammy in 2006). Martone produced a whopping nine albums last year, including well-known classical works by Mozart, Rachmaninoff, and Berlioz in addition to modern compositions like Dear Mrs. Kennedy, The Poet & The Prodigy, and Songs of Orpheus. Martone, who suffered a heart attack last year, thanked her and her husband’s caregivers, along with recording engineer Gintas Norvila and others.
This year’s Best Engineered Album went to That Wasn’t A Dream, a mostly instrumental jazz record by renowned session bassist Pino Palladino and producer/guitarist Blake Mills. Ranging from Brazilian-tinged acoustic jazz to tight, funky numbers and a meandering 13-minute free jazz excursion, That Wasn’t A Dream masterfully blends pristine sonics with unusual production choices like double-tracked bass and distorted synth processing, delivering 37 minutes of pure ear candy. Mills and his longtime collaborator Joseph Lorge co-engineered the record in Studio A at Sound City, which has been Mills’ home base since 2018. The record was mastered by Patricia Sullivan of Bernie Grundman Mastering, “Who has mastered everything we’ve ever worked on,” according to Mills.
Engineer Mike Tierney and mastering engineer Alan Silverman received the Best Engineered Album, Classical award for Cerrone: Don't Look Down by Sandbox Percussion. “Classical” in name only, the album features works by composer Christoper Cerrone for prepared piano, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, crotales, various drums and shakers, and vocals from mezzo-soprano Elspeth Davis. Tierney’s engineering emphasizes the crisp punch of the drums and crystalline overtones of the mallet instruments, while Silverman’s mastering gives the whole affair a decidedly modern sound compared to the clinical nature of most classical recordings. Even Tierney’s studio assistant, Casio the dog, got a shoutout!
This year’s award for Best Immersive Audio Album went to Immersed by Justin Gray, an exploratory instrumental album that falls somewhere between jazz, world music, and progressive rock (also honored were co-producers Drew Jurecka and Morten Lindberg, as well as mastering engineer Michael Romanowski). Notably, Immersed was written, engineered, produced, and partly performed by Gray, one of several immersive-focused artist/producers who are combining their artistic and technical skills to create music specifically for immersive formats. Sharing that distinction is fellow nominee Hans-Martin Buff, who wrote, sang, recorded, and mixed his debut album Tearjerkers (and also took home the Immersive Grammy for mixing Peter Gabriel’s i/o last year). In his speech, Gray congratulated his fellow nominees, saying, “Your work reflects the immense creative possibilities of immersive audio.”
The Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording went to French DJ Gesaffelstein (Mike Lévy), who elevated Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” with chopped vocals, pounding kicks, and clubby synths, somehow managing to make the supernaturally catchy hit even weirder and more danceable. Lévy, who also co-produced three tracks on the Mayhem album, has collaborated with the likes of Daft Punk, The Weeknd, Lil Nas X, Charli XCX, and Pharrell Williams, in addition to putting out three albums of his own. In an apparent nod to Daft Punk, Lévy accepted the award silently, from behind the unsettling visage of a pitch-black mask.
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