"Misha is a character. It is hard to have a conversation with him without holding one’s sides after he gets you laughing so hard you can’t stop. Underneath this jocularity lies a warm heart and the soul and technique of a serious jazz pianist.
We recorded Misha in 256fs DSD, Yarlung’s first album not transferred to DSD from analog tape. Tom Caulfield had been twisting my arm to record directly in DSD for some time, and we are happy to have finally taken the leap. Our booklet contains notes on the microphones of course, but I am happy to report that our HAPI and Pyramix software (picture below) from Merging Technologies in Switzerland once again did its fabulous work. We did not have a single hiccup or reboot during our sessions, testament to the quality of what Merging Technologies creates. We are grateful to Ken Salkin, Misha’s executive producer, Merging Technologies, of course, and Salesforce.com as our corporate underwriter for this recording.
Yarlung Records made its first two jazz albums with Misha in Cammilleri Hall at the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC. Misha played piano as a member of Sophisticated Lady jazz quartet. Dr. Antonio Damasio invited us back to Cammilleri Hall for these microphone tests and Misha spent a long session improvising on the piano for us as we tried myriad microphones and a few additional microphone preamplifiers as well.
Yarlung has often been approached by engineers, producers, musicians and composers to release albums which have already been recorded. Yarlung is a small label, but thanks to Naxos Global Logistics, our worldwide physical distributor in Munich, our relationship with NativeDSD which is clearly one of the very finest download companies in the world, and superb manufacturing plants in Europe, Yarlung is proudly positioned to reach the widest possible audience for our musicians. In order to harness this ability for more musicians and recording projects than Yarlung can record itself in any given year, Yarlung founded Andelain, a sister record label designed to release high quality albums recorded by other people. Andelain will also be able to re-release musical treasures from prior eras that have become hard to find. Please reach out to us if you have a project you think might be appropriate for release on Andelain.
Our recording engineers for Misha were Ted Ancona, Jacob Horowitz, Philip Richards and Dan Schwartz. And with their help, Misha Bigos does us the honor of creating the first album for Andelain.
–Bob Attiyeh, producer"
