Bruce Nazarian
Bruce Nazarian (March 27, 1949 – October 8, 2015)[1] was an American funk and rock musician, recording artist and music producer from Detroit, Michigan.
At age 17 he entered Wayne State University (WSU) for four years of musical study and began playing professionally with local artists and bands in Detroit.
He quickly became a "first-call" guitarist in the Detroit recording scene, working with diverse and influential producers like Don Davis, Don Was, and George Clinton, recording engineers Ken Sands and Jim Vitti, and R&B musicians like Earl Van Dyke, Richard "Pistol" Allen, Uriel Jones, Robert White and many other members of the Motown studio band the Funk Brothers.
Shortly after completing college, Nazarian began touring and recording with playing with many local and national acts, including Brian Hyland.
In 1975, a chance meeting with band manager Al Nalli would lead to his joining Brownsville Station (of "Smokin' in the Boys' Room" fame).
The A-Band became the basis of a new band, "The Automatix",[6] a contemporary rock/pop band that featured close friend and session veteran Jerry Jones on drums, local vocal legend Shaun Murphy on lead vocals, Luis Resto (of Was (Not Was) and, later, Eminem fame) on keyboards, and funk bassist Hugh Hitchcock.
After the Automatix disbanded, Nazarian continued producing, branching out into dance music, and utilizing many of early analog and digital sequencing tricks he had been developing.
Midway's "Set It Out" (featuring Donald Ray Mitchell of Was (Not Was) on lead vocals) became a Billboard-charting dance hit, even appearing on the soundtrack of "Breakin' II - Electric Boogaloo".
Nazarian also collaborated with Don Was on producing several 12" recordings, including "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" from "Orbit", featuring the vocal talents of Carol Hall.
After over a decade of live performances and studio sessions, in 1981 Nazarian was tapped to become Adjunct Music Instructor in the new Contemporary Media Program at Wayne State University.
(It was Nazarian who played all of the lead guitar solos on the movie's orchestral soundtrack) The second Millie Scott Album, "I Can Make It Good For You" was a groundbreaking project, in that it was recorded entirely without multitrack tape.
All tracks were created using music sequences programmed into the Synclavier, and live audio recorded directly into the 16-track Direct-to-Disc system.
In early 1990, Nazarian met producer David Kershenbaum, who at the time was finalizing the purchase of Studio 55 from then-owner Richard Perry.
Nazarian and Gnome's Studio 2 from New York landed at Powertrax in June 1990, just in time to begin work with film composer Charles Gross on the score for "Air America".
In addition to creating many Synclavier orchestral pre-realizations for Gross, Nazarian was also heavily featured as lead guitarist on the film's score.
Powertrax also played host to fellow Synclavier owner John Barnes, whose musical experiences with Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye made him legendary in the L.A. studio scene.
Simultaneously, Gnome Productions was providing sound editorial and mixing services on many animated TV shows, including Sonic The Hedgehog [10] from DIC for which Nazarian and fellow mixer Dennis Patterson won an MPSE Golden Reel award in 1993.
In 2000, Nazarian accepted a position on the advisory board of the DVDA, a non-profit trade association promoting optical disc media production.
From 1985 to 1986, he was a contributing editor to MIX magazine, where he created "In Sync", a monthly column devoted to computerized music production, sequencing and MIDI.
