Tony Testa has been a staple in various music scenes for a long time. While piano and keys are his forte instrument, his classically trained talents have spilled over to other instruments and music genres as well. These talents have allowed him to excel seamlessly in the music scene in various projects. From an early rock band, playing bass to becoming the lead pianist for the FAU Jazz Ensemble, and later, we got to initially meet Tony as the keyboardist for the alternative rock, funk, alternative jammy band, Tasty Vibrations“.

This blog post ultimately ends by promoting Tony’s Official Release Party for his first solo release, “Back to the Basics”.

Join us as we celebrate Tony and his band on Saturday, July 9th, 2020

Show Starts at 7:30 PM

At Crazy Uncle Mikes’s located at
6450 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton, FL 33487

Joining Tony Testa on stage are Shaw Davis & The Black Ties and Sierra Lane

Three awesome performances that will be a blast to see!

More on that in a moment…

About Tony Testa

Music has always been a part of his life, his grandparents were in show business. His grandmother Shirley was a singer, and her career took off as a skater in the “Roller Follies”, which was a traveling show that toured the U.S. back in the 40s. It was there where she met his grandfather Lou, who was a skater as well. They had sold out Madison Square Garden and Boston Garden, and eventually went on to start their own show. His grandfather had performed on multiple television shows such as “Ed Sullivan” and “Captain Kangaroo”. He also at the time skated the world’s fastest mile, and was featured in the Columbia World of Sports Documentary, “Wheeling Wizards”. Their relocation to Pompano Beach FL is where Tony’s roots began.

Tony Testa is a South Florida local, born and raised in Pompano Beach. He has been a part of the music scene since he was a teen. Traditionally trained as a classical pianist, he developed an ear for Jazz and Blues later in life. Tony has played in various bands over the last decade, performing at popular venues and recording different types of music. Nowadays, he is doing his own thing, staying true to his roots. A lot of his playing and style originate from some of his greatest influences such as James Brown, Ray Charles, and Cab Calloway. He is about to release his first album titled “Back To The Basics”, which encompasses his true passion for Jazz and Blues. His goal moving forward is to continue to write and record original music of all styles and genres.

Tony’s Personal Music Highlights:

Some of his greatest achievements trace back to high school. He was the bass player of a local alternative rock group called “Wyld Fly”. They were all friends that went to the same school together. During their tenure as a band, they opened up for Saigon Kick at Revolution Live and starred in a national “Maroone” commercial. In 2012, They were the featured band for the Winter Music Conference in Fort Lauderdale, and also the youngest band to win Revolution Live’s annual “Battle of the Bands”. In 2014.

Tony was awarded the “Woody Herman” Jazz award for his outstanding contributions to St. Thomas Aquinas’s Jazz Band. That same year he was nominated for a South Florida “Cappie” for “Best Original Score” for the play, “Dead Man Walking”. Once Tony graduated, he went on to study commercial music and jazz at Florida Atlantic University. It was there, that he had the privilege of being the lead pianist of the Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Courtney Jones. Near the end of his tenure, He joined another local rock group called “Tasty Vibrations”. His experience with Tasty led to great opportunities. They had opened up for Collie Buddz and Inner Circle as well as headlining Revolution Live in 2019. Now in 2022, He is releasing his first solo album titled “Back To The Basics”, which was recorded and produced here at Power Station Studios.

“I wanted this album to represent who I am as an artist.”

Tony Testa on “Back To The Basics” album release.

The style of this album is rooted in Jazz and Blues. These are two of Tony’s favorite genres of music that have influenced him and his style of playing. He wanted this album to represent who he is as an artist. Tony has recorded and released a lot of music with different bands over the years, but this will be his first solo album. His goal was to make this as “organic” and as “live” sounding as possible so that the listener can feel the energy of what we are playing. This was achieved with the exceptional musicianship and Power Station engineer, Brennan Fulton.

As we mentioned, at the top of this blog, we met Tony while he was recording as a part of Tasty Vibrations. Not long after that fun recording project, we all experienced the wrath of the onset of COVID-19 and the experience of being “locked down” and captive. During this time, none of us were certain what was to become of the situation and how this would affect our music lives.

As a result of this uncertainty, Power Station launched their “Power Station Pays It Forward” campaign where each week we would randomly choose a lucky artist and award them with 10 free hours in our studio. All that any hopeful recipient had to do was post a simple video or video shout-out to our social pages and tag us with the campaign hashtag.

As dozens of local artists made clever and even funny cellphone videos, each week we chose a new artist to win 10 hours of free studio time. This continued for several weeks until our music community got back on its feet. During one of these weeks’ campaigns, Tony uploaded and tagged us on his video submission. His video was so unique and thought through, it immediately resonated throughout our staff and community. We were all blown away from the effort Tony and his team put into this simple little campaign.

It just goest to show that Tony’s talent and creativity will take him to epic success in life!

Check out that video here

Tony Testa and his band brought a unique sound to this recording that translated into a final product that is fun and sonically amazing. The connection between Tony, his band and engineer Brennan Fulton is evident of the final masters!

Rob Roy, Director of Power Station Studios

Join Tony Testa for an evening to remember.

Tony Testa will debut his new release at “Crazy Uncle Mike’s”, the premier “live music” venue in South Florida. Also appearing with him on stage are, “Shaw Davis and The Black Ties” and “Sierra Lane“. This will be an event not to miss!

More about Tony Testa and how to follow him:
– Official Facebook Page
– Official Instagram
– YouTube

The Tony Testa Band:

Tony Testa: Keys/Vocals
Alfonso “Fonzi” Velasco: Drums
Joe Knowles: Bass
Shaw Davis: Guitar
Raul Duran Bustamante: Sax

More about the Release Party:
– Crazy Uncle Mike’s
– Crazy Uncle Mike’s Facebook Page
– Crazy Uncle Mike’s Instagram
– Check out 561music.com’s Episode on Tony Testa
– Sierra Lane: Website – Facebook – Instagram – YouTube
– Shaw Davis and The Black Ties: Website – Facebook – Instagram

Photo Credits for Tony Testa: @DylanHughesPhotovideo

About Power Station Studios:
Power Station Studios is a high-profile commercial recording studio that prides itself on its focus on the local community. While Power Station is a go-to choice for record labels, signed artists, and other high-profile clients, our goal is to deliver the record label experience to our local community. These blogs are designed to use our visibility to help bring the focus and awareness of our amazing local talent to the world of the high-profile music industry. If you are interested in recording at Power Station Studios, check out the rest of our website and give us a shout!

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On Thursday, June 9th, renowned artist, Deborah Silver commissioned some of the best in the business to perform on her upcoming recording project produced and arranged by the legendary Charles Calello.

Proud to be a part of this amazing group of people to engineer the production were Power Station Studio’s own Paul Kronk and Rob Roy. Deborah Silver, who is a regular Power Station client and a warm part of our studio family asked if we would be the engineering team to come to Criteria Recording Studios in Miami to make this record the best-in-class sounding production ever!

Somce our Power Station Studios is so busy with our productions, we don’t typically do outside sessions. However, Criteria Studio’s extra-large Studio A live room gave this production the ability to record the entire production of trombones, trumpets, saxes, piano, upright bass, guitar, and drums all “Live” at the same time. There’s is something special when an entire big band orchestra is all performing together in the same room to record the tracks.

Being that Deborah is one of our great friends and having the legendary Charles Calello who also is a dear part of the Power Station family, no engineer in their right mind would pass on an opportunity to work on a project of this nature.

From setup to the downbeat, to the final note, this was a recording session straight out of a book of fairytales. Modern audio engineers only dream to be on studio dates such as this one. This dream begins with an amazing artist. Deborah Silver is not only an amazing singer and performer, she is a seasoned pro at the highest levels of the business. Not to mention, she is such a great artist to work with. Her positivity and energy keep the momentum moving in the most positive of ways.

Next, the sonic dream continues with amazing arrangements. Charles Calello’s discography includes more than 100 “Billboard Chart” records and more “Top 10” hits than any other arranger. With Charles as the producer, arranger, and conductor on this project, our Power Station engineering staff was honored to be chosen to be a part of the production team on this date.

“This has got one of the best sounding recordings I have ever done”

Charlie Calello listening to the tracks back the following day at Power Station Studios.

The setup went as smooth as silk. The funny part was that almost the entire Criteria staff found their way into the session to help. They had said that “These types of sessions don’t come into the studio very often and we had to just come to lend a hand just to see it all come together!” We were happy to include them in our fun!

The fun began at setup. This included making way for the 4 Trombones, 1 Tuba, 4 Trumpets, and 5 Saxes (with a quick cameo of a clarinet and a banjo)! We had a blast setting up the live brass section.

(For our techie followers:) We had actually brought a couple Coles 4038 ribbons from Power Station for the Trumpets. We prefer ribbons on trumpets and wanted to be sure that we had enough. Actually, the Criteria staff surprised us with a couple of vintage RCA 77s and 44s with we excitedly used.

For the Trombones, we used Neumann U47s and on the Saxes we used Neumann U87s. However, on the Bari Sax, we used one of our Coles 4038s with a little blast of 100Hz to make it punch!

For the piano, we used a spaced pair of Schoeps small diaphragm tube mics with the piano lid on the short stick. Along with a couple of blankets over the top, this would give us the amazing sound of the precisionaly tuned grand piano and minimize bleed into the brass section.

For the upright, we used a Neumann M149 tube along with a D/I through an Avalon U5 direct box.

Drums and acoustic guitar were set up using our typical Power Station mic layouts.

All these lines ran directly through Criteria’s SSL 9000J console and then direct to ProTools.

The final result was pure magic! Not just from the tech notes above, but because of all the people involved. Not just Deborah, Charles, and our Power Station team, but because of “ALL” the people involved and who added their time to make this session so great!

On that note, Paul and Rob want to give a special shout-out and thank you to Simon, Dominick, Cameron, and the rest of the Criteria staff for making this production one of the best sessions any of us have done in a long time.

Great music, Great process, and most importantly, GREAT PEOPLE! That was the secret of this date’s success.

Thank you Deborah for bringing such an amazing team of people together for such an awesome session!!!!

For the next stop on this awesome production, we take the tracks back to Power Station Studios and do some instrument overdubs. This will include some electric guitar, Hammond B3 organ, and some other sonic accouterments. Then we will record Deborah’s vocals (on our original Telefunken ELA M251).

Once this is all complete, we will mix this amazing creation on our Rupert Neve 9098i console. See Deborah’s links below to follow her and get an update on this release!!!

For more on Deborah Silver, visit her online:

The Deborah Silver Website
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Spotify

For more AMAZING music from Deborah Silver, CLICK HERE!

For more information on Power Station Studios and how we can help you with your project, visit us at the links below:

Studio Website
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The post Artist Deborah Silver enlists the Power Station Studio team to record her 17-piece big band at Criteria Recording Studios appeared first on Power Station Studios.