Meeting Topic: Recording the Philadelphia Folk Festival
Moderator Name: Joyce Lieberman, WHYY Radio Engineering Supervisor, Vice-Chair AES Philadelphia Section
Speaker Name: Scott Petersen (Chair); Patricia Hurley (Vice-Chair); Jim Jackson (IT & Technical Engineer) and Dave Arellano (Mix Engineer & Equipment Specialist) of The Philadelphia Folk Festival Recording/Archive Committee, Philadelphia Folk Society
Meeting Location: WHYY, 150 N. Sixth Street on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, between Race and Arch Streets.
This meeting provided a behind the scenes or more accurately put, under the main stage (aka "The Grotto") look at the people and technology used to record this marquee event over its 50 plus year history. From cassettes to reel-to-reel to Adat to DAW multi-track capture over Dante the sophistication of the operation has grown right along with the festival.
Our presenters were Scott Petersen (Chair); Patricia Hurley (Vice-Chair); Jim Jackson (IT & Technical Engineer) and Dave Arellano (Mix Engineer & Equipment Specialist) of the PFF Recording and Archives Committee. Together they walked us through the challenges of the planning, execution and post production work required to archive everything that happens on the multiple festival stages year after year.
We were treated to a fascination slide show; fly over footage of the festival grounds; a time lapse sequence showing the main stage and control room being built; system network diagrams, channel assignment sheets and plenty of war stories of memorable events over the years. It truly takes a village to pull this off; all guided by the steady hands of these individual's deep well of experience.
Written By: Chip Powell (Chair - Philly AES Section)
