Shure Distribution sponsors Music Producer Guild Awards 2012

The UK music production industry gathered at Café de Paris in London in February for the Annual Music Producer Guild Awards. Shure Distribution UK has been a key supporter of the awards since their inception in 2009 and this year sponsored two of the awards- Live Production of the Year and Mastering Engineer of the Year, the latter sponsored mainly by Radical Engineering whose products are distributed by Shure in the UK. 

London-based music engineer Mandy Parnell took home the Mastering Engineer of the Year award for her outstanding work throughout the year, most notably on Börjk’s 2011 Biophilia album. Three projects were shortlisted for the Live Production of the Year award- Jools Holland’s TV series, The Who’s 2010 Super Deluxe Live at Leeds/Hull DVD release and the groundbreaking Radiohead DVD Live in Praha, which won the catagory. The non-for-profit DVD of a 2009 concert by Radiohead in Prague was assembled from clips of fan-shot footage, all of which was created using mobile phones, and edited together to the professional soundboard recording of the concert. 

Shure UK’s Tuomo Tolonen presented the award to Peter Halliwell, one of the members of the editing team. Tolonen commented, "The MPG Awards is one of the annual events that Shure and I look forward to every year, it’s nice to have an awards ceremony focused on honouring the people responsible for music production in this country, and recognising their creative talent." He went on to complement the creators of the Live in Praha DVD- " They guys behind Live in Praha gave their time and skills to the making of a completely free DVD, all from a mutual love of Radiohead," he said. It was a very cool project and they are the most deserving of their MPG award."

The awards themselves are fully working, gold-painted Shure 55SH microphones and the original design of these classic mics was released as the Shure 55A back in 1939, and, in its 55S form, was famously used by Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra in the 1950s.