Bob Power is an American

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pr ...

–winning and multi-platinum record producer, audio engineer, composer, arranger, performer, and music educator.

Early life

Power was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, moved to

Rye, New York Rye is a coastal suburb of New York City in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is separate from the Town of Rye, which has more land area than the city. The City of Rye, formerly the Village of Rye, was part of the Town until it r ...

, then moved to

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

, and attended Webster College, where he studied music theory. He also studied classical composition and conducting, alongside playing his own contemporary music. He subsequently obtained a master's degree in jazz from

Lone Mountain College Lone Mountain College was a college acquired by the University of San Francisco (USF) in 1978. History It was built and founded by the Religious of the Sacred Heart as Sacred Heart Academy in Menlo Park, California, in 1898. The school became ...

(since acquired by

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

) in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

Career

Power stayed in California between 1975 and 1982, scoring music for the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

Emmy Award–winning television series '' Over Easy'' and writing music for broadcast advertising. Power contributed music for advertising campaigns for companies, including The American Cancer Society ( Emmy Award winner),

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

Casio is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. I ...

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlant ...

Elizabeth Arden Elizabeth Arden (born Florence Nightingale Graham; December 31, 1881 – October 18, 1966) was a Canadian-American businesswoman who founded what is now Elizabeth Arden, Inc., and built a cosmetics empire in the United States. By 1929, s ...

, Hardee's,

Hertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that o ...

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to as Mercedes and sometimes as Benz, is a German luxury and commercial vehicle automotive brand established in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a Mercedes-Benz Group subsidiary established in 2019) is headquartere ...

, Purina, and The United States Postal Service. He then moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1982 to further his music career by playing gigs in a variety of venues, including one performance at a wedding of a member of the Bensonhurst Mafia. Power was asked by the owner of

Calliope Studios In Greek mythology, Calliope ( ; grc, Καλλιόπη, Kalliópē, beautiful-voiced) is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses". ...

to sit in as engineer of a music recording session by the group

Stetsasonic Stetsasonic is an American hip hop band. Formed in 1981 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, Stetsasonic was one of the first hip hop acts to perform with a full band and use live instrumentation in their recordings, paving the way for future ...

. Stetsasonic thought so highly of Power's work that he continued to work with them, overseeing the breakthrough sessions for their album '' On Fire''. He continued his liaison with rap groups thereafter, linking up with the New York City rap collective the

Native Tongues The Native Tongues were a collective of late 1980s and early 1990s hip-hop artists known for their positive-minded, good-natured Afrocentric lyrics, and for pioneering the use of eclectic sampling and jazz-influenced beats. Its principal me ...

. The

was a group of hip-hop groups, including A Tribe Called Quest, Black Sheep, De La Soul, and

Jungle Brothers Jungle Brothers are an American hip hop trio composed of Michael Small (Mike Gee), Nathaniel Hall ( Afrika Baby Bam), and Sammy Burwell (DJ Sammy B). Known as the pioneers of the fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and house music, they were the first hi ...

. All of the musical groups within the collective based their music around intricately designed and complex arrangements of sampling. Power's ability to produce music that mimicked the clarity of the sampled recordings was highly valued by producers within the Native Tongues. His most noteworthy project as an engineer is his work on A Tribe Called Quest's sophomore album '' The Low End Theory'', which was recorded between 1990 and 1991 and released in September 1991. Power describes his work on ''The Low End Theory'' in the following quote: By the mid-1990s, Power ran a production suite at

Sony Music Studios Sony Music Studios was an American music recording and mastering facility in New York City. The five-story building was a music and broadcasting complex located at 460 W. 54th Street, at 10th Avenue, in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan ...

in New York. His profile continued to expand through his record production work with Me'Shell N'degéocello, The Roots, D'Angelo, and

Erykah Badu Erica Abi Wright (born February 26, 1971), known professionally as Erykah Badu (), is an American singer-songwriter, record producer and actress. Influenced by R&B, soul, and hip hop, Badu rose to prominence in the late 1990s when her debut al ...

. The latter saw Power get his first number 1 R&B single, " On & On," while N’degéocello's ''

Peace Beyond Passion ''Peace Beyond Passion'' is the second studio album by American musician Meshell Ndegeocello, Me'shell Ndegeocello, released on June 25, 1996, on Maverick Records. The album peaked at No. 63 on the Billboard 200, ''Billboard'' 200 albums chart and ...

'' received a nomination for a

as 'best engineered album'.

Recent career

Bob Power is currently an Arts Professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts located in

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Power, Bob 1952 births Living people Musicians from Chicago Webster University alumni American audio engineers Record producers from Illinois Musicians from New York (state) New York University faculty Engineers from Illinois