Frankenstein was recorded during live ballet performances at War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco by RR’s engineering team, comprised of Grammy-winning engineer and Technical Director Keith O. Johnson, and multi-Grammy-nominated engineer Sean Martin. The album was produced by the Grammy-winning team, Marina A. Ledin and Victor Ledin. The producers state, “The live audience, the special effects, beautiful sets and incredible dancers allowed us to document an ‘event’ rather than simply recording a musical score… The composer, Lowell Liebermann was with us at all of the performances, the orchestral musicians were collaborative throughout, and, of course, Martin West worked tirelessly with us at the performances as well as in the editing and mastering of the final resulting release.” This is the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra’s fifth release with Reference Recordings.

Under the direction of Music Director and Principal Conductor Martin West, San Francisco Ballet Orchestra is internationally recognized as one of the foremost ballet orchestras in the world. After decades of using freelance musicians, the Orchestra was founded in 1975 – as Performing Arts Orchestra – under Music Director Denis de Coteau. The Orchestra performs all of San Francisco Ballet’s repertory programmes at the War Memorial Opera House, and has accompanied other companies including Hamburg Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Bolshoi Ballet, and The Royal Ballet. The Orchestra has established a critically acclaimed discography of 17 recordings, beginning with Paul Chihara’s The Tempest in 1982. In 2015, the Orchestra won two Grammy awards in the classical music category for Ask Your Mama, composer Laura Karpman’s setting of Langston Hughes’s poem “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz”. The Orchestra has appeared in televised recordings such as the inaugural Lincoln Center at the Movies: Great American Dance broadcast of SF Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s Romeo & Juliet, and PBS’s Great Performances: Dance in America broadcasts of John Neumeier’s The Little Mermaid, Lar Lubovitch’s Othello, Tomasson’s Nutcracker, and former Co-Artistic Director Michael Smuin’s productions of The Tempest, Cinderella, Romeo & Juliet, and A Song for Dead Warriors.

For more than 45 years, REFERENCE RECORDINGS has been one of the most innovative and respected independent labels in the music business. RR releases have been highly praised for their dedication to high quality sound in the service of great music. Founder Tam Henderson, was joined in 1978 by engineer Keith O. Johnson. Some 150 projects later, RR is still recording what many consider to be the finest-sounding classical, jazz and blues discs in the world.