CHRIS KALCOV
Chris studied the Clarinet and Saxophone under the direction of Anthony Pike and Mornington Lockett, making his first appearance with a big band at the Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in 2010. Regularly stepping in with the late Russ Henderson Trio at the 606 Club, Chris took an interest in Jazz engineering and transcription, where he became heavily involved behind the scenes in the London Jazz scene. He moved on to study the prestigious Tonmeister course in Music & Sound Recording at Surrey University, where he developed the recording craft working in radio and outside broadcasts, being awarded the gold prize for BBC Technical Achievement at the Student Radio Awards and the AMS-Neve Prize for best recording portfolio.
In 2014 he joined location recording company Floating Earth, working closely under balance engineer Mike Hatch, where he developed a specialist approach in engineering classical music, both recorded and for broadcast. By the end of sprint Chris worked as balance engineer for Eric Whitacre's iTunes Festival performance with Hans Zimmer, reaching #9 in the Billboard Classical chart in 2015, before graduating as a Tonmeister in 2016.
For the three years following Chris worked as one of six specialist in-house editors for Spitfire Audio, creating world-class orchestral samples for composers at the renowned Tileyard Studios creative hub in King's Cross, London, as well as recording a small selection of their on-location libraries.
Now freelance, Chris works in relationship with the UK's most respected Classical and Jazz musicians, producers and engineers, whilst also providing specialist audio technical support for some of Europe's most demanding live music broadcasts. These have included dozens of live-to-cinema screenings with the National Theatre and English National Opera, and demanding music productions from the MTV EMAs and BBC Children in Need to Later… with Jools Holland and the Eurovision Song Contest. He recently joined The Sound Alliance team in delivering specialist television sound for the BBC, and in 2022 guaranteed the sound facilities for the televised State Funeral of HMQ Elizabeth II at Windsor Chapel, watched live by 4.1 billion people around the world.