Judith Sherman remembers winning her first GRAMMY Award in 1994 with something resembling disbelief. That year, inside New York’s Radio City Music Hall, Whitney Houston opened the Ceremony with "I Will Always Love You"; U2's Bono presented Frank Sinatra with a GRAMMY Legend Award, and Lifetime Achievement honoree Aretha Franklin sang "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."
"It was just incredible," Judith recalls, reflecting on the moment for GRAMMY.com. "I got to meet Maya Angelou, and Peter, Paul and Mary. And I sat at a table afterward with [the members of] U2."
Sherman's very presence in that room would have been a complete shock a little more than two decades earlier. Back then, in the mid-'60s, she was a seventh-grade English teacher in West Seneca, New York, trying to figure out her next move as her first marriage was breaking up.
Though Sherman didn’t originally set out to be a producer, she was always surrounded by music. Everyone in her family seemed to play something, and no matter where they were, they were singing all the time. "And I do mean all the time," she says.
Sherman decided to tap into that passion and enrolled in a grad school program at the University of Buffalo as a vocal performance major. "I wanted to be in the music field, even while I was teaching. I was singing in a chorus and going to a lot of concerts. The draw was always music, I just didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I might be a singer, and I did try composing, which I was really bad at," she remembers. "But, you know, one thing led to another, and as I always tell people, I got here through a series of fortuitous accidents."
Today, Sherman’s work recording and producing solo and chamber music has earned her 15 GRAMMY Awards (seven of them are for Classical Producer Of The Year). She launched her own production company, Judith Sherman Productions, and has been recognized for her dedication to the classical music community.
More recently, she participated in the Recording Academy’s creator-to-creator learning platform, GRAMMY GO, providing her insights in Carolyn Malachi’s class, Music Production: Crafting an Award-Worthy Song.
Sherman spoke with GRAMMY.com about her decades-long career and what continues to inspire her as a classical music producer.
How exactly does one go from teaching English class to becoming a GRAMMY Award-winning producer?
Music was always a part of my life, but so was language, so I graduated as an English major. When my first marriage ended, I decided that I did want to pursue music, so I managed to get into grad school at the University of Buffalo as a singer. It’s a two-year program, and during that first semester, I needed another course, and there was an electronic music class there. I thought, Well, that sounds interesting, because I’d always loved physics, so I signed up for that and got hooked.
You were going to school in the early '70s when so many things were changing in regards to sound recording and music technology. What kind of learning environment did that create for you?
At that time, the music part and the technical part were growing together.
My last two semesters there, I was the TA for the Electronic Music Lab. In those days, if you were going to make a piece of electronic music, you had to record it to tape and overlay it, and so on. So you had to know how to calibrate a tape machine, and if you were going to do that, you might as well start learning about the microphones. I just kept going from there.
After graduating, what kind of opportunities led you on the path toward classical production?
I came to New York and worked in a jingle house, and then went on tour singing with [contemporary classical composer] Steve Reich. After that, I found a job with WBAI in 1972. That was a listener-funded radio station, and it was housed in a former church, so the back area with the balcony became a recording studio, and we would have concerts there.
We had two concerts a week, and I learned a lot about my technique very quickly because my mistakes were going to go on the air. It was a musical education for me, because I got to hear so many kinds of music. I recorded small chamber orchestras, but also Ravi Shankar, jazz groups, blues groups, just a little bit of everything.
Who were some of the music figures who shaped your career?
When I was leaving WBAI, I managed to get a job as the recording engineer for the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont. It was started by Rudolf Serkin and the Busch family of the Busch String Quartet, and they were looking for a recording engineer. Rudolf was a childhood hero of mine, so I really loved that job.
My boss was Mischa Schneider, who had been the cellist for the Budapest String Quartet, and I learned so much from him. Even when he couldn’t see the musicians, sitting in the studio, he would say, "Why are you using the fourth finger there? You should be using the third finger on that note." He could actually hear the difference through the speakers.
During that time is when I started producing some things. An engineer from Vanguard Records was going to do a classical recording for another label and asked if I wanted to produce it. I had done some pop stuff, some folk music, but I thought, Gee, I think I’ve been training for this my whole life.
It seems like the world of production and music recording is always evolving. How did those changes affect you?
I started producing in the days of analog tape. So I would take things home to an old Ampex tape recorder with stacks of tapes to edit with a razor blade. Later, I ran into another engineer who was editing on a computer. I went and watched him work, and it was very slow, and very cumbersome, but not as cumbersome as editing tape. So when the next generation of that technology came along, I bought one, and that sort of changed everything.
How do you know when you’ve had a good session?
I’m always happiest at the end of a session, when a musician says, "Wow, that was so much more fun that I thought it was going to be." The idea is to make the sessions as stress-free as possible, because musicians can get a little stressed out about being recorded, but the point is that we're all going in the same direction.
You recently shared some of your expertise in a GRAMMY GO class. What kind of advice would you offer to aspiring producers?
You have to build a trust with the musicians, and it has to be the kind of trust that goes both ways. So even when I think that we already have it, if a musician says, "Well gee, I’d really like to do that over again," we’ll do it because they might have just had this really magical thought.
I listen to them, but I also have to remind them that the way they feel doesn’t always translate to how it sounds. But they have to know that I'm on their side. I want them to sound good.
What would you say are the challenges unique to classical music production?
For the most part, we want to capture the performance as it was. With a lot of pop music, the song is being created in layers. With classical music, it’s mostly done live. All of the musicians are in the same room performing together. Everything is being done at the same place, at the same time, and those little balances and tweaks are things the musicians have to create live.
It varies whether you’re recording a chamber group, or a solo pianist, or a string quartet. With a string quartet, for example, everyone is exposed. You can hear everything each of them are doing, so if anybody loses focus for a second, that take will need to be edited. It takes a lot of concentration from everybody to be listening to everyone else around them.
Do you remember winning your first GRAMMY at the 36th GRAMMY Awards?
I was in tears because at that time, I was married to Max Wilcox, who was a very-well known producer. I just figured in those days that you had to work for a label in order to get a GRAMMY and I had never worked for a label. I've always been freelance, so I was shocked.
I was euphoric just getting that nomination, and I certainly didn't think I would win, so when [clarinetist Richard Stoltzman] presented the award and said my name? Well, this happens every time I hear my name [at the GRAMMYs], but I just completely forget who I am, and the only thing I can think is, don’t trip. It’s thrilling every time.
What keeps you excited and engaged when it comes to your job?
I like it because I learn so much music. When I go into a session, I have to know the music well, and by the time I’m finished editing, I know it intimately. I get to learn so much, and I don't have to practice [Laughs.] That's a limiting factor for musicians. They can't be learning a new piece every week, because they’ve got to be able to perform it. I don't have that problem.
What’s ahead for you? Are there still items left on your bucket list?
For 50 years now, I have wanted to do a recording of the three Benjamin Britten quartets, and I'm going to get to do that next year finally. That’ll be with the Calidore String Quartet next year, which is the 50th anniversary of Britten’s death.
What is it like to operate in the world of classical music? How different is it from other genres?
We all sort of root for each other because there are so few classical recording producers, maybe just 40 of us in the world, and there are very, very few labels who underwrite the recording of classical music.
Looking back on your career, how do you see your impact on the world of classical music?
You know, I recently went to a concert of a string quartet that I've been recording, and they said, "At our rehearsals, we'll get to arguing about something, and we’ll say, ‘Would Judy approve?’" So I know I have had an impact on the musicians that I've worked with. I know that my work is not going to save the world, but at the same time, I also know that it has made a lot of people’s lives richer — both the musicians and the listeners — and that’s all I can really ask for.