ANDY KREHM, Mastering Engineer
For over two decades, Andy worked as a first-call studio/theatre musician and music producer/arranger prior to making a permanent career change to a full-time mastering engineer in the late 80's.
As a musician, he was associated with names such as the Pointer Sisters, Aretha Franklin, Oscar Peterson, Nimmons 'n' Nine Plus Six, Vivienne Williams, Concert Productions International, O'Keefe Centre, Royal Alexandra Theatre, Imperial Room Orchestra, Canadian Musician, etc.
Since moving to his current career, he has mastered close to 7,000 albums plus 100's of singles and EPs. Over fifty albums he mastered have been nominated for Juno Awards (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys) and nine have won Junos.
Literally scores of albums mastered at Silverbirch appear on the nomination and winner's lists of other prestigious award granting bodies, such as the Blues Music Awards (formerly the JC Handy Awards), Canadian Folk Awards, Canadian Independent Music Awards, National Jazz Awards, Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards, NAR LifeStyle Music Awards and the Maple Blues Awards.
Almost every year, a glance at the Maple Blues Awards nomination list will show that a good number of the listed artists/groups mastered or played on albums mastered at Silverbirch!
In 2008, Andy mastered Jeff Healey's "Mess Of Blues", which was completed just before his untimely death. In May/08, it reached #1 on the Billboard Top Blues Albums Chart. Jeff and his band won seven Maple Blues Awards and Jeff was nominated for a Juno Award in the BLUES ALBUM OF THE YEAR category.
The core of Andy's regular clientele are a number of mixer/producers who regularly recommend or send work directly to Silverbirch, such as Ken Lewis, whose credits include 12 Grammy credits and over 40 Gold and Platinum albums and singles.
(See Selected Clients)
While most of Andy's mastering work comes from Canada and the US, he has also mastered for many artists in other parts of the world such as Iceland, UK, Russia, Azores Islands, Bermuda, Iran, Israel, Thailand, Singapore, Jamaica, Mexico and many countries in Europe and Africa.
Andy's extensive experience in the music industry has given him a background that is much broader than many mastering engineers. The knowledge he learned in his former career as a musician/arranger/producer is often helpful during mastering and editing sessions.
Our mastering studio is located at Silverbirch Productions in Toronto, Canada. The studio is professionally designed and purpose-built for mastering and is equipped with the finest mastering-specific outboard gear and monitoring system.