Two months ago, I filmed KENIA at the prestigious Feinstein's/54 Below venue in New York. Brazilian by birth, singer by trade, KENIA's musical universe is rooted in samba, bossa nova and choro, heavily influenced by American jazz.

I filmed this concert with two cameras. I focused one camera continuously on the band members and used the main camera to create wide, medium and close-up shots of the artist to faithfully capture her facial expressions and her love of the music.

She has released seven solo CDs (and counting) and collaborated with music legends and Grammy winning artists such as Ivan Lins, Antonio Adolfo, Paquito D'Rivera, Jay Ashby, Cesar Camargo Mariano and James Taylor, as well as renown producers Creed Taylor and Jeff Webber.

KENIA has a deep and sultry, richly diverse and unexpectedly explosive voice. In both her native Portuguese and English, her sound transcends geographical and musical boundaries.

Arriving in the U.S. in 1980, KENIA quickly established herself as the new Brazilian singer on the scene and recorded her debut in the States with trumpeter Claudio Roditi on his album Red on Red.

Several years later, she launched her solo recording career, producing four popular and critically-acclaimed albums for the MCA and Denon labels between 1987 and 1991.

In 1997, KENIA launched her own label, Mooka Records, with a particularly ambitious effort; Project Ivan Lins, a tribute to the one of Brazil's most prolific and popular contemporary songwriters, featuring Lins himself as a special guest. For more information about KENIA, please visit her official website at http://kenialive.com.

Recently, I had the privilege of filming the "Hello West 46th Street" show performed by off-Broadway songwriters Anya Turner and Robert Grusecki.

Two-time finalists for the Richard Rodgers Award, their Off-Broadway musicals include "Greetings From Yorkville", directed by Thommie Walsh and Baayork Lee and produced at the SoHo Playhouse and "After All, a musical much ado" presented at the York Theatre Company.

I filmed this concert with a single camera. It was a challenge to capture both Anya and Robert on the screen, because many times they were singing together. When Anya sang a solo, with Robert on the piano, I focused the camera on her.

The team has also received ASCAP and MAC awards and grants from Meet The Composer.

Anya and Robert have written and recorded five CDs, published three songbooks, and their songs have been covered by such artists as Donna McKechnie, Karen Akers, and Steve Ross.

"Hello, West 46th Street" celebrates the street that has been home to many generations of cabaret performers and continues the tradition with an evening of eighteen contemporary cabaret songs, including several original seasonal songs and six world premieres.

For more information about Anya Turner and Robert Grusecki, please visit their official website at www.anyarobertmusic.com.

Recently, I started to edit my customers' videos on Avid Media Composer. Avid Media Composer is a very powerful tool that allows for precise editing of video content. It is used in many broadcast television stations for the editing of documentaries and live concerts. Many Hollywood studios also use Avid to edit movies.

More importantly, Avid Media Composer has precise tools that allow me to do audio editing from different takes of a recording session, with the audio and video synchronized, in a way that other software have had difficulty doing.

In the editing process, the artist gives me an edit decision list, and then I use that list to create the master (the finished product). The edit list contains a list of cuts (takes), and many times, they are taken from different days or hours. The challenge is to take all of these takes and make them sound to the listener completely seamless. Avid's audio tools allow me to do that very effectively, and even allows me to make frame-by-frame adjustments until the cut sounds perfect.

I also use Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro for customers that request me to use these editing programs and for older projects that were edited with these programs.

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