Karen Kane: Music Producer/Recording Engineer/Bio

Inspired by attending Woodstock '69 and music by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, and others, Karen Kane has been in the music business for more than 33 years. Now, with over 180 album credits and countless live sound shows, Karen continues to thrive in the music industry.

She has engineered 3 JUNO nominated albums in '97, '02, '03 by Jack Grunsky, Big Daddy G and Harry Manx. (The JUNO Award is the "Canadian Grammy"). Two of those nominations were in the "Best Blues Album of the Year" category. Other albums have been nominated for Boston Music Awards, and singles have appeared on U.S. music charts. Her extensive experience with on-location mobile recording includes the BareNaked Ladies (for a live TV special) and a music festival which included Janis Ian. In 1986, Karen helped launch Tracy Chapman's career by engineering her first-ever demo recording. In addition to several years of jingle engineering, she managed a number of recording studios including 6 West Recording Studios, a major jingle facility in New York City. Her extensive live sound work at music festivals and concerts has been going on since 1976 and is still very active today. For the past 19 years, Karen has been the Head Live Sound Engineer at the Acoustic Stage at the Michigan Women's Music Festival.

Karen's recording career was originally focused in the Boston area from 1974-1990, and then in Canada from1990 to 2002.

While in Boston, she learned the art of engineering at Intermedia Sound, where the legendary album, "Dream On" by Aerosmith was recorded. Karen helped pioneer the way for women in audio by being one of the first women recording engineers to be successful, as well as one of the first successful free-lance recording engineers (male or female) in the area.

While in Toronto, Karen designed and taught audio classes for Centennial College and The Learning Annex. In 1998, she joined the faculty at Harris Institute for the Arts where she earned a highly respected reputation as an instructor. Karen also has had numerous featured articles published in Canadian Musician, Professional Sound, Sing Out and Hot Wire.

In April 2002, Karen re-located to Wilmington, North Carolina and continues her work as a Producer/Engineer and Audio Educator. In 2005, Karen opened her own studio in Wilmington called The North Bend Room, offering quality overdubbing and mixing at reasonable rates. Recent highlights in 2008/2009 are album projects with L Shape Lot, Someone's Sister and singer/songwriter/actress, Nina Repeta (Dawson's Creek, "Bessie").

Now in its' sixth year, Karen Kane's Audio Engineering Classes have become popular in the Southeast North Carolina area. The classes include 4 courses plus an advanced one-on-one intensive and are offered in January, April and September (Summer term is sometimes available). Registration forms are now being accepted for the next term which starts on Sept 29, '09. For more information about the classes, go to the Classes link on this website.

To hear mp3 samples of Karen Kane's work, GO HERE

Contact Karen Kane