Sail Sport Talk host Karen Lile is also an independent record producer and librettist and this week she is at Skywalker Sound, the tech building at Skywalker Ranch where she is producing 3 music albums with Grammy award winning musicians, Tammy L. Hall, Jonah Kim and composer/pianist Kendall Ross Bean. Singer Leberta Loral and bass player Ruth Davies, and orchestra conductor Jaco Wong are also part of the project, with sound engineers David v.R. Bowles and Dann Thompson. Lile records at Skywalker Sound courtesy of and by the grace of a Skywalker Ranch tradition stated in is website that says, “At its heart, Skywalker Ranch remains a colony of artists who come together to collaborate in a unique environment dedicated to filmmaking and storytelling.”.
Piano Finders moved the Steinway Concert Grand that was formerly at Fantasy Studios, to Skywalker Sound for these recording sessions.
From the Skywalker Sound Website:
The pulsating hum of a lightsaber. The thunderous footsteps of a stalking Tyrannosaurus Rex. The awesome roar of Star-Lord’s Milano. For more than a generation, Skywalker Sound has created soundscapes that have redefined aural immersion.
With origins based in Ben Burtt’s landmark work on 1977’s Star Wars, Skywalker Sound specializes in sound design, mixing, and audio post-production across multiple mediums. From the gathering of real-life, organic sounds to developing new techniques in sound presentation, Skywalker Sound remains one of the world’s most innovative facilities — eager to explore, create, and venture into the unknown.
The origin of Skywalker Sound can be traced back to 1975, when George Lucas and Gary Kurtz hired Ben Burtt, a young graduate of the USC School of Cinema & Film. They were looking for a “director of sound,” someone who could imagine and implement a creative soundtrack to match the revolutionary visuals they planned for a low-budget science fiction adventure called Star Wars.
The company soon became Sprocket Systems, and shared space with Industrial Light and Magic in San Rafael, before moving up to the newly completed Skywalker Ranch in 1987.
Since 2013, Skywalker Ranch has hosted the Sundance Institute’s Music and Sound Design Labs. The Sundance composers and filmmakers are given invaluable access to collaborate with Skywalker Sound’s Editors, Sound Designers and Re-recording Mixers during the post-production process in ways they have never been able to before. In hosting the Sundance Labs, Skywalker Sound is proud to continue the legacy that George Lucas began years ago, and to help realize his vision of what the Ranch could be. At its heart, Skywalker Ranch remains a colony of artists who come together to collaborate in a unique environment dedicated to filmmaking and storytelling.