In Conversation with John Ostendorf, Recording Producer

Meet the Man Behind the Earphones

John Ostendorf

VoxAmaDeus’ master recording producer, in conversation with Richard A. Shapp

Vox recording session

At every VoxAmaDeus concert our audience is offered the opportunity to purchase a wide array of compact disc recordings from Vox’s extensive concert repertoire. In this interview we invite you to meet the man you never see, but whose golden ears are essential to the success of every recording you can purchase to take home and enjoy at your leisure. Meet John Ostendorf!

RAS: John, how and when did you begin your association with Valentin Radu and VoxAmaDeus?

JO: My nearly 20-year association with Valentin Radu and VoxAmaDeus coincided with the winding-up of my active singing career and my move to a full-time concentration on record producing. The two endeavors had overlapped for some time—more on that later. I'd just produced a Bach solo album for soprano Julianne Baird, a longtime vocal colleague and friend in Philadelphia. She introduced me to Valentin Radu; we hit it off instantly and planned a period-instrument Messiah recording for the VOX label—a happy coincidence. That went really well, and two decades and about thirty recordings (maybe more?) later, we're still at it.


Even with the decline of the commercial record industry—leastwise, the domestic, classical end of it—we've found a way to build a handsome and expanding repertoire. I have been able to place these projects, both choral and instrumental—Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven and a host of 19th century works and, lately, a foray into the brilliant works of Gershwin—onto a number of "name" American labels, including SONY, Time Warner, Albany, Polygram, Newport Classic, a whole series on  Lyrichord and, of course, VOX Classics.
In recent seasons, following the lead of major orchestras and choral societies, we have begun to issue our projects on the group's own private label, VAD Classics.

RAS: What recordings do you consider to be the “highlights” of that association and what makes them stand-out?

JO: With all the glories of the Handel and Bach material we've recorded, my "dream" projects will seem curious. I believe our current undertaking, Gershwin & Ellington, featuring British pianist Peter Donohoe and the Ama Deus Ensemble, is the most thrilling for me to date. The symphonic size of the works, the level of virtuosity, and Valentin's exploration of the genius of the still-underappreciated George Gershwin have all been an enormous inspiration. I play that master tape all the time at home. It was taken from a live January 4, 2013 Kimmel concert and is due out this spring on VAD Classics.
But I must say my all-time favorite recording is perhaps our most humble. In the mid-90s, when Time Warner and Polygram were still operational in America, I was asked for a simple Christmas Carol "Sing-along" CD, to be included by those companies in their seasonal promotional packages—throw-away items, frankly. They wanted a straightforward, no fuss, four-part chorus delivering the standards, with organ and brass ensemble back-up. The CD was to be accompanied by an optional booklet with the words/music printed. Nothing fancy, I was told. Valentin and I collaborated over the list of carols and how we'd execute them. He had a crack crew of 12 of the best VAD choristers, and we worked in a lovely church in Ambler, Pa. with a charming organ and the Chestnut Hill Brass. Despite our best efforts to keep it all "simple and straight," we had a ball coming up with variations and colors for the singers: sopranos sometimes took the bass line, the altos sang the melody, the guys split up into four parts and sang a verse alone, then the women, etc. Planning it was a blast, and the results delighted us all. We called that CD Glad Tidings. I still have that on at Christmas—and not just for sentiment: it's really superb—and my favorite.

RAS: What make VR & Vox standout for you as a performing artist and recording producer?

JO: Valentin is an irresistible combination of European Maestro, Pied Piper and the Energizer Bunny. He has a wide compass and a love of life, of music and all good things, and he shares. Enthusiasm, hard work, humor and generosity—I haven't always found them all in one colleague, but he has them. I think I am most touched by his loyalty: to me, to the people around him, to the things he values and believes in. That counts for plenty in my book. The man assembles highly competent people, onstage and behind the scenes, respects what they do, and is steadfast in supporting them. I am very complimented by this, and it makes one want to give one's all. And I love his approach to music and life.

RAS: Please tell our readers something about your careers as a performing artist and a producing engineer.

JO: I have re-invented myself a few times in a long and good life. I came from a science-oriented family, was raised in Fairfield County, Connecticut, and, although music was always in our family, my three brothers and I did what we were expected to do: we went to fine liberal arts colleges and pursued academic degrees. Mine was European History at Oberlin College. But I got infected with the music performance bug there and wound up spending more time in Oberlin’s internationally famed music conservatory than in the history building.

My life took a dramatic shift when I won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions in Cleveland.  I'd entered on a lark—really—and I only had one aria prepared. Then I was accepted as an apprentice artist at the prestigious Santa Fe Opera for that summer. Well, my new course was set. I wanted to sing! Because I had always taken piano and voice lessons on the side, I could sight-read music easily. Also, I had a great working knowledge of French, Italian and German.

After Santa Fe, I went straight to New York—to the rent-controlled apartment I still live in on 99th Street!—and finished my Oberlin history degree by correspondence course and started to earn a living as a freelance singer. During the 1970s the Metropolitan Opera ran something it called the “Met Studio,” where we sang much-truncated versions of The Barber of Seville and Gianni Schicchi in the local schools. Getting shot at with spitballs and paper clips at 8:30 a.m. in PS 42 in Brooklyn quickly eradicated any "diva" tendencies I might have been working on!

Don Giovanni

Being an opera singer was always hard-work and not so glamorous. I sang Mozart's Don Giovanni, Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) and Don Alfonso (Cosí fan tutte), and Escamillo in Carmen, with many companies here and in Europe. I appeared often with the Opera Company of Philadelphia at the lovely Academy of Music. However, my own métier as a singer evolved more on the concert stage than in opera. I enjoyed and, frankly, was better off concentrating on the music, on singing and working directly with a conductor and orchestra than dealing with costumes, staging, endless weeks of rehearsing, other singers' egos and craziness.

Frankly, most of my best work was in the Handel-Bach-Haydn concert repertoire with major orchestras and festivals. One of my happiest assignments was bass soloist in Messiah with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by its great assistant conductor, William Smith. In the late 80s and 90s, the period-instrument movement was just getting going in America (and I sang my share of 415-pitch concerts and recordings), but I must say my six or seven seasons at the Academy with Bill Smith and the Philly Orchestra made that work glow for me. It was always a privilege.

RAS: I remember Mr. Smith fondly, too. So what eventually drew you into the recording business on the production side of the microphone?

John Ostendorf as Mozart's Figaro

JO: I didn't have a large voice. I was a bass-baritone and knew my talents were better showcased on recordings rather than belted out in a large hall. Recording drew me. This was the dawn of the digital age, the marvelous new compact disc era, and music that appeared only on LPs was being re-recorded for the new format. Because Handel and Bach and other Baroque material was what I sang best, I looked for ways to record myself singing this repertoire. Some of my like-minded colleagues—former VoxAmaDeus star Julianne Baird chief among them—saw the advantage of organizing our own recording projects. Most of the Handel Italian operas were, at that point, still unrecorded, and they had great bass and, of course, soprano roles. And the orchestral accompaniments were modest: Handel used only a few strings, continuo and occasional winds or brass. One could more feasibly assemble and fund a modest chamber orchestra for this repertoire. I started out researching the music, assembling the edition and orchestra parts, translating the Italian, transposing the old clef signs into their readable modern versions—in short, doing it all.

My singer colleagues helped raise funds and sang for free. We recorded four or five Handel operas and oratorios, premiere recordings, on shoestring budgets. I'd sing my own solo assignment first and then would sit in the booth and help "guide" (I didn't say "produce" in those days) my fellow singers through their work. Mostly, I looked at the clock. We were always under time constraints.

RAS: I know what you mean. From my very first VoxAmaDeus recording session I noticed how you repeatedly intoned diplomatically worded admonitions to inform Maestro Radu it’s time to give the downbeat and record some more—tempus irreparabile fugit!

JO: After a record company finally took interest in our work, and agreed to release the projects on CD, I was provided with a fabulous recording engineer, Steve Epstein, the same colleague with whom I still collaborate today. Steve and I are the current VoxAmaDeus recording team.

I don't sing any more, but my two decades onstage give me an extra measure of compassion for what a solo artist goes through. Singers get wacky, sometimes even behave badly, but they have my total sympathy. I remember what they go through, what's expected of them. Conductors too.

RAS: When you think of other professional ensembles with which you have worked, what makes the Vox experience meaningful?

JO: There's a family feeling with VoxAmaDeus as well as a built-in excitement I don't find elsewhere. I know and rely on Valentin, on Bonnie (Bronwyn Fix-Keller, the associate music director), on Pamela Phelan (the executive vice-president of the Board), on Tom DiSarlo (Concertmaster of the orchestra) and the players whom I’ve gotten to know so well. I know the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater extremely well now and can depend on a certain routine. That's very good for recording. I enjoy and, hopefully, have earned the respect of my fellows. Much more doesn't need to be said. It's wonderful to have a musical kinship built out of many seasons of working together.

Handel's Julius Caesar

The nature of our current recordings—essentially "live" (we record at the dress rehearsal and then again at the evening concert itself)—makes things much tighter, more pressured, than at a separate studio session with more time, no audience, fewer distractions. Everyone—they're all pros, which is grand—is on his game, ready to go. This keeps good focus. My job is mostly to help steer the ship into port on time. I'm looking at my watch and the music in front of me with about equal concentration. But we do it. Steve Epstein and I can work a certain amount of "magic" later on when we assemble the material: editing, splicing, small boostings, sound enhancement, cleaning up musical things a little, etc. But most of the excellence of what we do is owing to what happens on the stage, on the podium and the throats and fingers of the artists assembled. They and Valentin "make" the music; we only polish it up a little.

RAS: Before you switched to full-time recording producer, what important concerts and/or staged roles did you perform?

JO: I sang the title role in Handel's Giulio Cesare at San Francisco Opera opposite Carol Vaness. That was a high. Likewise, singing Bernstein’s Songfest with Lorin Maazel conducting the Cleveland Orchestra—and the composer coaching and kibbitzing (his word) with us—that was also great. Add to this shortlist my run of Messiahs with Philadelphia Orchestra, concerts at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony and Seiji Ozawa and recording Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex with Christopher Hogwood for London Records.

John Ostendorf with Martha Graham

I sang with the Martha Graham Dance Company onstage at the Met, La Scala, Covent Garden and on Broadway, and got to know Miss Graham well toward the end of her life. More recently, I've recorded a number of operas by Thomas Pasatieri with sopranos Catherine Malfitano, Lauren Flanigan and Sheri Greenawald. Then there has been a long series of recordings of operettas by Jerome Kern, Emmerich Kálmán, Franz Lehár, Jacques Offenbach and Gilbert and Sullivan, with a fine troupe each summer in Wooster, Ohio. Next summer we will do Gypsy Baron (Johann Strauss II) and HMS Pinafore (G & S).

RAS:  What else would you like to tell the VoxAmaDeus readers and audience?

JO: I think Vox audiences must know they are lucky to be able to enjoy full orchestra concerts of this great concert repertoire at a time when other organizations are folding and pessimism is rampant. This certainly applies to my own professional world. I have been lucky to have remained a freelancer. Had I taken a 9-5 job at SONY or Harmonia Mundi, I'd be out of work today and out of the music business, like many of my colleagues who flew higher—over and into the radar, not under it. I want to quietly but sincerely acknowledge Valentin and also Ruth Williams, Pam Phelan and Bonnie Fix-Keller—a trio who are a blend of savvy pros and fairy godmothers and who have helped make these projects and the entire long arc of VoxAmaDeus' success possible. Thank you, all.