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Welcome -

"Chaka Khan, Laura branigan, Willa Ford, Buster Poindexter"
By Andy Kaufmann
Music Connection, January 31, 2005 - February 13, 2005

Chaka Khan's latest platter, classikhan (Sanctuary Records), showcases some unusual songs for a disco diva. Well-worn tunes like "Hey Big Spender,""To Sir With Love" and "Crazy" are reinterpreted to a dramatic effect. Complete with lush backing by the London Symphony Orchestra, the album is a bold move on the part of Khan, who needed an equally courageous producer. Enter Eve Nelson, a classically trained dynamo who graduated from Berkelee College of Music in just two years.

Though relatively new to production, Nelson is a longtime fan of Khan's. She also understood that this session represented something new for the singer. "It's a concept album," declares the producer. "There are a lot of personal stories behind these songs." Most essential of all was Nelson's ability to understand Khan's way of communicating artistic sentiment. "She said to me, 'Eve, I need a lot of purple.' And I think what she meant was this deep experience, this complicated mirage of colors." Nelson, who also writes, engineers and composes, provided Khan with the demos she created at her MIDI studio in the Hamptons. Having mapped out and agreed upon a template before recording was critical, especially given the logistics involved in hiring an entire orchestra.

Though working with Khan was a dream come true for Nelson, she'd already tasted some significant achievements. She's a graduate of the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and the winner of the first-ever ASCAP Scholarship. Before graduating from Berkelee, she penned the theme song for the Boston Bruins, which led to gigs composing riffs for Boston's other teams, the Patriots, Celtics and Red Sox. Though Nelson failed to collect royalties on these audio snippets, a regret she blames on youthful inexperience, the gigs served as a career launching pad that has included an armful of jingles with clients as diverse NBC News, the NBA and Inside Edition. These assignments ultimately helped her land a gig as a full-time composer. When Nelson's company merged with Universal in '89, she decided to move to New York. As a recording gun-for-hire, word of her talent spread quickly. Nelson's notoriety led to working with and learning from the late Keith Diamond, author of "Caribbean Queen." A publishing deal with Zomba followed and it was there that she was first asked to helm an entire album, in this case for latin pop queen Angela Bofill.

Nelson's production company, formed with talent scout Bernadette O'Reilly in '96, was initially established as a way to launch the career of their client, Billy Crawford, who has since become a star in Europe. Despite the company's origins, Nelson continues to release everything she does through the outfit. A jack-of-all-trades, Nelson is able to act as her own support system, giving her a rare sense of security within a fickle industry. "There's a nice feeling [in knowing] that I can program, arrange, contract, record and mix. That's exciting, to know that I can do the whole thing."

A typical Nelson production involves the artist singing on a skeleton track and then composing around the vocal. Nelson also likes to experiment by mixing the old with the new; for example, filtering the sound of a dusty Wurlitzer through modern plug-in effects. But Nelson believes that unique recordings require unique approaches, so she meditates on each project before starting. "My approach is to close my eyes and let it come to me. I try to do it in a very cerebral way." Nelson isn't the type of producer who can spit out album after album; even though it may mean she'll make less money. She's content doing "what's right for the artist," taking her sweet time with each record. Another way she does well by her clients is in providing different options from which they may choose.