By the way, the name of the assistant is properly Gerhard Samuel rather
than "Gerard." He taught at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati
later and I had some composition classes with him myself in the early
1980s. I do not have fond memories of that course, but that's at least how
you
spell the name (and find the person).

best,

David Neal Lewis
Hamilton, OH

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 2:14 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> A long-time MLP fan tipped me off to this photo being for sale on eBay. I
> jumped right on it!
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55748706/Minneapolis%20Tribute%20520120%20First%20MLP%20session.jpg
>
> this is from the very first Mercury recording session in Minneapolis,
> January 19-20, 1952. Dorati
> made his first recordings of Borodin's 2nd, Stravinsky's compete
> "Firebird", Berlioz "Roman
> Carnival" and pieces by Ravel and Debussy. The tape machines shown are
> "portable" Ampex 300's (they
> still weighed about 100lbs each, whether or not in portable cases). David
> Hall is using what I think
> is a Gates portable mixer/mic preamp (it might be RCA or Collins). The
> recordings were made with a single Neumann U-47, and the
> Gates unit probably was used to provide a gain stage after the mic and to
> distribute the signal to
> both tape recorders. David Hall is probably working with Dorati and the
> assistant conductor to
> gather approved takes he can edit together. The next time Mercury visited
> Minneapolis, fall 1952, my
> father had built his recording truck.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>