New Media School Ex’pression Offers Top-Flight Facilities

SCHOOL'S IN: After a public unveiling a the September 1998 Audio Engineeing Society Convention in San Francisco, the Ex'pression Center For New Media - actually a school - is open for business. The management team of Ex'pression is made up of Full Sail Academy veteran Gary Platt, who serves as president and director; CEO Peter Laanen, a Dutch businessman who was previously the mnaging director of Arcade Music Co. Germany GmbH and president/CEO of UltiFox Europe BV; and Dutch entrepreneur Eckart Wintzen, who is the principal investor in the venture. The center offers intensive, 14-month programs in sound arts and digital visual media. Its capacity is 36 students in each programm - or a total of 72 - but the first class, witch is scheduled to start Monday (11), will have 60 students. "In a college, you attend classes for 18 hours a week," says Platt. "In this world, it's 40-45 hours a week. The labs are nine hours and the classes three hours, so you put in a lot of nine-hour days."

The school, which is located in the Bay Area city of Emeryville, Calif., was designed by veteran architect John Storyk, whose credits range from Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios in Ney York to the $ 12 million Synchrosound Complex in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Storyk describs Ex'pression as a "shining exampe" of a state-of-the-art educational complex for the new millennium. Among its highlights is a studio complex that is features a large tracking area that feeds six identical control rooms. "The students in the six control rooms can all see and hear the same program material, and the instructor can monitor any of the six control rooms," says Storyk. "A lot of people have flirted with this idea, but its not easy to do from a technical point of view. This is the most exciting bunch of sticks and bricks int he place, altough every else about the school is exciting.

The 66,000-square-foot complex also boasts 5.1-channel monitoring in all classrooms; video and audio lines throughout the facility; a digital media group with a dedicate (l machine room an(l windowed color doors; three full audio recording studios with 5.1-channel monitoring, 400-foot Control rooms, sereens, built-in Foley pits, and variable aeousties; a digital studio centered around a 96-input D950 console that are sides in a 600-square-foot control room; and theaters where sound reinforeement is taught. One of the sehool's novelties is a "garage studio" that Platt's wife, Debbie, thought up. "It's a miserable place," says Platt, laughing. "it looks like any garage in America."

However, the garage studio's education value in this age of self-made project facilities cannot be under estimated, according to Platt. Besides its core program, Ex'pression will offer opportunities for real high school students records at the school and then sell their CDs at shows, with proceeds going to the respective school's music departments. Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education. As such, it must adhere to the Maxine Waters Aet, which mandates that at least 85% of vocational school graduates find jobs in the field in which they were trained within six months of graduation. For now, the school offers a diploma program. However; once it receives accreditation as a college- a process that can take two years - it can offer a degree program.

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS in which such established producers as Babyface and Don Was dominated the Grammy Awards the voting members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences have named five candidates for producer of the year, non-classical, who are all new to the category-including two women, Sheryl Crow and Lauryn Hill, in a male-dominated field. The other nominees are Michael Seinhorn (Hole's "Celebrity Skin" and Marilyn Manson's "Mechanieal Animals," which appeared just weeks apart); Thad Blake (Mitchell Froom's "Dopamine," Soul Coughing's "El Oso," and Bonnie Raitt's "Fundamental," which he ex-produced with Froom); and Rob Cavallo (Goo Goo Dolls' "Dizzy up The GUI-I," Green Day's "Nimrod," and the Alanis Morissette track "Uninvited").

Hill, who is shaping up to be a ultifeeted music maker in the ok of Quincy Jones or Babyface, its the nod for her erratically and commercially lauded solo album, "The Misseducation of Lauryn Hill," as well as for her production on Aretha Franklin's "A Rose Is Still A Rose" (which Hill also wrote). IN MEMORTAM: Studio Monitor offers its profound (l condolences to the family and friends of Liendra Webdale and to the staff of New York studio Masterdisk, Sahel e she was employed as a receptionist. Webdale, .32, was killed after being pushed onto a subway trails Jan 3.

Described in a Masterdisk statement as "an exemplary employee" with "a bright smile and sweet demeanor Webdale seemed destined for success. Had she pursued a career at Masterdisk, she would have been poised to follow in the footsteps of owner Doug Levine, who began his career at the studio as a mail-room employee; and of chief engineer Scott Hull, veteran engineer Howie Weinberg, and rising engineer Andy VanDette, who started, respectively, as an intern, a delivery drivel; and a receptionist. In my many visits and phone calls to Masterdisk in the past few years, I found Webdale to be cheerful, sensitive, and graceful under the pressures of a demanding job.