SUNY Schenectady grad Charlie Post wins another Grammy

Charlie Post smiling in suit and tie in the recording studio. — PHOTOGRAPHER: - -

Charlie Post in the recording studio. (Photo courtesy Chicago Symphony Orchestra).

Article Audio:

Share on Facebook

Save

SCHENECTADY – SUNY Schenectady graduate Charlie Post has another Grammy Award to his credit.

Post, a sound engineer with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was one of three music engineers on the recording “Bates: Philharmonia Fantastique — The Making Of The Orchestra,” which won the Grammy earlier this week for Best Classical Orchestral Performance.

The piece was performed by Edwin Outwater & the Chicago Symphony; the recording was released last April.

Also credited were engineers Shawn Murphy and Gary Rydstrom and Michael Romanowski, mastering engineer.

Post, a graduate of the former Mont Pleasant High School in Schenectady, shared a Grammy two years ago for his work on Shostakovich: Symphony No. 13, “Babi Yar” by Riccardo Muti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Following are excerpts from a Daily Gazette story after Post won his first Grammy:

Post began his music studies at age 10 with saxophone lessons. His private sax teacher was Conrad Kushay. Around that time, Barbara Aldi, his music teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Schenectady, gave him tickets to an Albany Symphony Orchestra concert — his first experience seeing a live orchestra. Later, at Mont Pleasant High School, where he graduated Class of 1990, he was in bands and choir and counts Michael Decker and Jerome Wawrzyniak as teachers who were especially supportive. He also sang in “The Entertainers” at Proctors in a group that Aldi led. But Post began looking beyond music in his senior year.

“I’d been interested in electrical engineering and my high school had a college prep tech program connected to General Electric,” he said.

After a few forays into those studies, Post discovered he missed music. The next two years he pursued a music business degree at Schenectady County Community College and fondly remembers Brett Wery (recently retired as Dean of the School of Music) and Bill Meckley (retired head of the Empire Jazz Orchestra) with teaching him “a lot of life lessons.”

“But I was looking at programs based on recording and SUNY Fredonia had a really good one on the German Tonmeister technology (based on recording classical music),” Post said.

Following Fredonia, Post worked in New York City, Florida, at Tanglewood in the Berkshires and eventually Chicago.