AES Budapest 2012
Friday, April 27, 19:00 — 20:00 (Room: Bartók)
Heyser Lecture
followed by
Technical Council
Reception
Abstract:
The Richard C. Heyser distinguished lecturer for the 132nd AES Convention is Graham Blyth. Blyth was born in 1948, began playing the piano aged 4 and received his early musical training as a Junior Exhibitioner at Trinity College of Music in London, England. Subsequently, at Bristol University, he took up conducting, performing Bach’s St. Matthew Passion before he was 21. He holds diplomas in Organ Performance from the Royal College of Organists, The Royal College of Music and Trinity College of Music. In the late 1980s he renewed his studies with Sulemita Aronowsky for piano and Robert Munns for organ. He gives numerous concerts each year, principally as organist and pianist, but also as a conductor and harpsichord player. He made his international debut with an organ recital at St. Thomas Church, New York in 1993 and since then has played in San Francisco (Grace Cathedral), Los Angeles (Cathedral of Our Lady of Los Angeles), Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich (Liebfrauendom), Paris (Madeleine and St. Etienne du Mont) and Berlin. He has lived in Wantage, Oxfordshire, since 1984 where he is currently Artistic Director of Wantage Chamber Concerts and Director of the Wantage Festival of Arts. He divides his time between being a designer of professional audio equipment (he is a co-founder and Technical Director of Soundcraft) and organ related activities. In 2006 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in recognition of his work in product design relating to the performing arts. The title of his lecture is "In Pursuit of Elegant Simplicity: Life, Luck, and Learning in Music and Audio."
Blyth will talk about how he became a design engineer in the audio industry, the development of the mixing console from a personal perspective during his 41 years in the business, and, in particular, his approach to microphone preamp design with illustrated examples. He will also talk about the importance of the analog engineer in a mostly digital world and about the technical and musical challenges in designing high-quality digital classical organs, with audio examples. Blyth is well known to attendees at AES conventions for his popular organ recitals.
