Skidmore alumna wins Grammy
Emily Lazar '93 won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for her engineering work on Beck's "Colors" album. She is the first woman to win in the category.
The English major and music minor at Skidmore said her experience at the College played an important role in her growth as an artist and engineer.
"I’m very grateful to have studied in an environment where Creative Thought Matters,” Lazar told Saratoga Living. “The Skidmore College motto is an idea that remains in hyper focus both in the studio and out, and in everything that I do.”
Only a very small percent of mastering engineers are women — and Lazar is one of the go-to engineers in the industry.
“She’s in the mix!" she exclaimed in her acceptance speech. "This is the first time a woman has ever won this exact category as a mastering engineer."
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As president and chief mastering engineer of The Lodge, Lazar has worked with a range of groundbreaking music from platinum-selling artists such
as David Bowie, Lou Reed, Destiny's Child, Madonna, Missy Elliot and The Shins. She
has also mastered original sound tracks for feature films including "Training Day"
and "Boys Don't Cry" and TV series such as "Six Feet Under."
This wasn't Lazar's first trip to the Grammys. She was nominated in 2014 for the Foo Fighters' "Wasting Light," which was up for Album of the Year, and for Record of the Year for Sia's hit "Chandelier” in 2014. In 2016, she was nominated for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for her work on the album "Recreational Love" by American indie pop duo The Bird and the Bee.
Terence Blanchard, who was the 2008-2009 McCormack Artist-Scholar-in-Residence at Skidmore and received an Honorary Degree from the College in 2012, also picked up a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition for the composition “Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil)” that he wrote for the score of Spike Lee’s film BlacKkKlansman.
Q&A with Oscar nominee Terence Blanchard
