Page 25 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

Grundman recalls the original Headhunters mastering sessions: “When they brought
that in, I was working at A&M at the time, running their mastering department. Well,

that record was shockingly different from what I expected a Herbie Hancock album to

be. His approach was different from just about anything I had heard before. Herbie

modernized jazz pop music, and because of the mentality that he has and that he

put into that, it makes it even more interesting. It had a lot more depth than most
records I had heard up to that time.”

The new box set includes albums from every major era of Hancock’s career—from

his early albums as a bandleader to his later fusions of jazz with funk and hip-hop,

and his Grammy-winning work from the 2000s. The albums were remastered by

Grundman from the highest-quality original audio sources available.

The lacquers were cut from the original masters by Grundman and the LPs were

pressed on high-quality, 180g black vinyl and housed in heavyweight tip-on jackets.

“There is a certain kind of mastering mentality that you get into when you know eight

very different recordings will be all together in a box set,” Grundman explains. “There

are certain consistencies that you try to hold onto. You can’t really make them all
sound exactly the same, but you can prepare the masters in such a way that you

bring in all your experience to make the collection have a spectral balance.”

“There’s quite a range there,” Grundman continues. “One album is all solo piano.

And then there are albums that are more produced, and have more things going on,

so they don’t have the same kind of presence. From that standpoint, it’s a matter of
fundamentally optimizing how people are going to experience each album and the

message that each album has.”

Bringing Music Back to Campus Safely

Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London is one of the premier arts colleges in

the world. Key to the school’s musical curricula is its annual award for The Gold