--New York Daily News, February 22, 2002--

Film Company Turns Up Sound

Astoria Studios adds recording facility

By Donald Bertrand, Daily News Staff Writer

Kaufman Astoria Studios is getting into the music recording business. Last year, Kaufman acquired the assets of Master Sound, which had operated in the studio complex since 1995. The company, a leading facility for film, television and commercial production, will now house a high-tech recording studio, KAS Music & Sound

"The creation of KAS Music & Sound underscores our ongoing commitment to provide the absolute best environment for our entertainment industry clients," said Hal G. Rosenbluth, president of Kaufman Astoria Studios.

Joe Castellon, KAS Music & Sound executive creative director, said "Before as Master Sound, it was just a straight-ahead recording studio. When producers come in now, I know exactly what their problems are so everything is done to make the job easier, and actually less expensive."

"We are changing the direction of what the facility does," added Castellon, who oversees the facility's day-to-day operations. "The idea now is to have a one-stop approach," he said.

KAS Music & Sound will have its own composers and arrangers on staff so that music can be provided for independent producers.

"Universal, MGM and other film production companies have such musical capacity, but the small independent film companies don't," he said. "We can provide them with the film score, the recording of it. They can come in here and leave with it all done. They can get the whole project done from one end to the other," said Castellon, who comes to the helm of KAS with more than three decades of recording industry experience.

He was involved with three 2002 Grammy nominated albums, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Betty Buckley's Stars and The Moon: Live at the Donmar; Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Moulin Rouge, and Best Musical Album for Children for Elmo and the Orchestra.

To do this, KAS is constructing new mastering suites and a lounge area. They are to be completed next month.

Also scheduled to be completed is a climate-controlled storage area where tapes and hard drives of works in progress can be kept at the ideal temperature and humidity.

Being remodeled is a studio where automatic dialogue replacement and voiceovers are done.

In the mastering room, workers were busy this week installing new soundproof walls and ceiling. Another set of walls and ceiling will be constructed within them, said the executive director.

"All to ensure the highest quality," he said. "It's like those little Russian eggs one inside another."

Mastering, said Castellon, is the last process before the CD gets to your house.

"We want to keep them comfortable so they are in the best frame of mind as they are recording," Castellon said of the new lounge for recording artists.

Past and present clients of the facility include Billy Joel, Placido Domingo, Keith Richards, Tony Bennett, Dizzy Gillespie, Betty Buckley, producer Michael Fine, producer Thomas Z. Shepard, Carly Simon, Blues Traveler, N'SYNC, Itzhak Perlman, R.E.M., Wynton Marsalis, David Sanborn, Art Garfunkel and Chick Corea as well as Lifetime Television and the cast of the popular PBS series, Sesame Street.

The huge, four-story building that today takes up the full block between 34th and 35th Aves. and 35th and 36th Sts., was built in 1919 to house the Famous Players-Lasky Corp, which soon after became Paramount Pictures.

The Army Signal Corps took the studio over in 1942, and used it to produce training films.

The Army continued active production, adding television to its film and radio operations until 1970.

The studio was declared surplus property by the Army in 1972. For the next four years, it was operated by the City University of New York. In 1975, a live TV production of Thieves was broadcast from Astoria, and in 1976, The Next Man, starring Sean Connery, originated there as well.

That year, the studios were designated a National Historic Landmark.

In 1982, real estate developer George Kaufman, in partnership with Alan King and Johnny Carson, obtained a lease to the property.

Dec 18, 1983, marked the beginning of the modern era at Astoria, with groundbreaking for the $50 million expansion that became Kaufman Astoria Studios.