Nominate them for NPR’s 50 Great Voices TODAY! Do you choose your audiobooks by reader rather than author? Then you know the power of the perfect voice! Deadline for nomination is TODAY Oct. 15th. Here are the details from the NPR website <www.npr.com>:

In January 2010, NPR will launch a year-long exploration of 50 of the great voices in recorded history. With the series, we’re hoping to discover and re-discover awe-inspiring vocalists from around the world and across time. Through archival material, interviews and music, NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered will spend the year delving into the lives and legacies of these voices. But we don’t know yet whose voices they’ll be.

Between Oct. 5 and Oct. 16, we’re asking you — NPR listeners and readers — to tell us who in the whole world possesses the most beautiful, singular voice you have ever heard. Leave your picks, along with a sentence defending each choice and a link to an audio clip if possible, in the comments below, or email GreatVoices@npr.org.

We’ll compile your nominations, along with those of our panel of experts, academics and public-radio critics. At that point, we’ll name the nominees and ask you to help us winnow them down to the 50 great voices we’ll profile in the coming year. We’re relying on you to remind us of those voices we may have forgotten or never got the chance to hear; those voices that may sound strange to Western ears; vocalists silenced by politics or history; the singers who are only really embraced by critics and those who are heroes of the everyday listener. No voice is too outlandish, too old or too compromised. It’s All Voices Considered here, and we can’t wait to see and hear what you send us.

Thanks to Ellen Myrick for the tip!

http://hearthebill.org/

As the  Odyssey Honor voice and the 2009 Audies Award winner for Best Solo Female Narration for Curse of the Blue Tattoo, Katherine Kellgren’s talent has been featured here before. But I am so thrilled that Ms. Kellgren has taken time away from the mic to answer my “Inside the Audiobook Studio” questions below.

Now on to the interview…

1. What’s on your MP3 player?

I have just listened to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline read by the author. His reading is so wonderful – simple and straightforward, yet so full of character and nuance. It’s an education for me as a narrator to listen to him. As for the book itself, it’s no wonder it has already appeared as a stage play and a film just in this year alone. I think it’s a modern classic! Another thing that is never far from my earbuds is a recording of speeches from Shakespeare by Sir John Gielgud called Ages of Man. Alas, it’s never been put on CD, but it is available as a download. I was mesmerized by this recording when I was fourteen years old, and I still listen to it all the time. It’s an absolute favorite!

2. Tell us about your role in the audiobook community.

As a narrator I do my very best to make a book come to life in the way the author would have intended. I pour as much as I can into this, and spend a lot of time doing research on word pronunciations, working out character voices, & etc. There’s no rehearsal, and often you don’t get a second take, so I find it quite scary (although exciting) at times. Occasionally when I’m very lucky, I’ll have some help from the author. For instance, with the Bloody Jack series that I’ve been recording recently, the author, Lou Meyer, has been talking to me on the phone before I go into the studio. He’s been speaking to me about his vision of the characters, guiding me on the pronunciation of their names, and helping me with the process of tracking down the original tunes to the dozens of traditional folk songs, sea shanties, and ballads that appear in the books.

3. What was your most interesting/embarrassing/hilarious moment in the audiobook studio?

Every once in awhile, something will strike me as funny when I am recording, and I can get a tad hysterical. Once I did a novel about a woman who inherited a fabulous fortune. The book went into vast detail about the various treasures she possessed, describing and listing them for page upon page upon page. It was gobsmacking and yet fascinating, and it kept building up more and more. Finally, when I thought that section of the book was over and the characters were moving on to other topics, one of them suddenly stopped and said something to the tune of “wait a minute, what about the fourteen diamond tiaras in the bank vault?” and I lost it. I spent about ten minutes with tears streaming down my face just trying to record that one line. Every time I thought I might have it, I would look through the glass and see the director’s shoulders shaking up and down, and that would set me off again. Finally, I had to excuse myself and immerse my face in cold water.

4. What future trends or changing perceptions or technologies do you think will have the greatest/worst/revolutionary impact on the audiobook production field?

As a huge audiobook fan (in fact, kind of a geek…), I always find it wonderful when classic recordings from the early days of audiobooks are remastered and made available as downloads or CDs, but I often feel that some of the truly great ones have escaped the net and are sinking into relative obscurity because they are only available on vinyl. Companies like Caedmon and Naxos are doing wonderful work reissuing classic recordings, but I wish lots of other distributors would do the same so the public would have access to these treasures before they are lost.

5. What’s new and exciting in your part of the audiobook community?

I am excited that I had the opportunity of recording book six in the Bloody Jack series, My Bonny Light Horseman, which has recently been released. Also I am about to finish work on The Death of the Heart (written in the 1930’s by Elizabeth Bowen), and start The Salamander Spell (book five in a series for young adults by E.D. Baker). There is also Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well as its companion volume Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. They were both, let’s just say “unusual” literary experiences, and it was a pleasure to have the chance to work on them.

Thanks so much for visiting Audiobooker, Katy! And what a great collection of upcoming titles to add to my listening list!

Quick! How do you pronounce The Sword of Shannara? If you’re narrator extraordinaire Scott Brick, there’s no guessing. Read Scott’s blog post on how he compiles an audiobook glossary with the aid of a Radio Shack telephone recorder. I am always fascinated with the research that narrators do to make sure that each word is pronounced correctly. I’ve posted on resources that have tools to determine the correct pronunciation of proper & place names as well as online sound files to check the authenticity of an accent or dialect. But when it comes to the arcane language of fantasy novels, thank heavens for narrators who go straight to the source! Note to all you aspiring fantasy narrators – check the web site Dead or Alive to see if that phone call’s possible before you sign the contract

And if you’re wondering about the results of Brick’s Share the Experience contest in conjunction with Audio Publishers Association – here’s a post that updates you on the process of choosing the grand prize winner of personal audiobook narration coaching & a recording session with a major publisher. I can’t wait to hear the winner & runners-up selected from the field of 392 submissions!

Mo Willems & daughter Trixie are our special guests today, as Weston Woods delivers an extra-special “Inside the Audiobook Studio.” Paul Gagne, Director of Production, recorded a fantastic audio interview with Willems, multiple Geisel Medal & Caldecott Honor recipient, and Trixie, her father’s co-star in Weston Wood’s 2007 Carnegie Medal-winner Knuffle Bunny. If you’ve ever seen Willems in person and wonder how he can calm down enough to be recorded on mic, you’ll find out who rules the Pigeon roost after listening to this marvelous interview at http://www.box.net/shared/du47zq0iu3 , captured after the Willems duo completed the audio recording for both the audiobook & animated film of The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. Hint: she’s a pint-sized pro in the glass booth

Paul Gagne, producer of countless audio & video award-winners including a 2009 Odyssey Honor for I’m Dirty!, graciously takes the interview seat in my every-Wednesday feature “Inside the Audiobook Studio.”

1.  What’s on your MP3 player?

I use an iPod, and it’s mostly loaded with music.  Close to 12,000 songs – I’ve been an obsessive consumer of music for close to 40 years!  I usually listen to music when I’m driving, but more and more I’ve been alternating between music and audiobooks for the one hour commute to and from work.  The last audiobook I listened to was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  I just LOVED listening to Sherman Alexie’s voice and didn’t want it to end – very funny and moving at the same time.  Another title I recently listened to was Scholastic Audio’s recording of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret.   I became so emotionally caught up in the ending of the story that I wasn’t paying attention to my driving, went through a stop sign and got a $75.00 traffic ticket.  I told Scholastic they could use that in their ad copy if they paid the ticket.  They didn’t take me up on it.

2.  Tell us about your role in the audiobook community

I’m the Director of Production at Weston Woods.  I’ve been with the company for over 31 years now, starting as a sound editor fresh out of college.  I suppose my very first “audiobook” was a radio drama based on Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Foghorn,” that I produced for an independent study project in college.   It was pretty terrible.  Anyway, I gradually worked my way up to producing and directing at Weston Woods, and I’m now responsible for overseeing projects from start to completion.  I have a permanent staff of two – Melissa Reilly Ellard is our subsidiary rights manager and my co-producer on a majority of our productions, and Steve Syarto is our in-house audio engineer – supplemented by occasional freelancers.  Our job functions overlap in a lot of areas, but I tend to direct most of the voice recordings and work with our composers to develop a musical approach for each title.  All of our productions are pretty fully scored with original music.  We’re a bit different from most audiobook producers in that we are usually simultaneously producing a video and an audiobook recording for each title we adapt, but whether it’s a video or an audio recording, I’ve always felt that the SOUND was the most critical part of the process.  Maybe that comes from having started as a sound editor after a background in college radio, but I’ve always felt that the soundtrack is where we’re adding our own interpretation to an author’s work and bringing it to life.

We’ll frequently consult with the author both before and after the recording, and in many cases they’re directly involved.  We recently had Mo and Trixie Willems back in our studio – we started a tradition in 2005 where we’ve recorded one of Mo’s stories each year shortly after the annual ALA conference, and this year was no exception — to record the voices for an animated film and audiobook adaptation of the second book in Mo’s “Pigeon” series, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog.  Mo reprised his role as Pigeon and Trixie played the part of The Duckling!  Those sessions are always a lot of fun, and require very little direction – Mo has done a lot of stand-up comedy, and Trixie is just a natural, so it’s just a matter of letting them interact with each other in the studio and having a couple of microphones there to record it.  They improvised this bit where Pigeon and The Duckling are comparing notes on their favorite foods, and it’s just hysterical.  We also recently recorded author Amy Krouse Rosenthal reading her book Spoon, and John Himmelman’s daughter, Elizabeth, read his book Katie Loves the Kittens, which is about a dog she owned.

3)  What was your most interesting/embarrassing/hilarious moment in the audiobook studio?

Interesting:  They’ve ALL been interesting in one way or another, but being a frustrated musician I’d have to say that some of the most interesting projects for me have been the ones where we’ve taken a book with rhyming text and turned it into a song.  Antarctic Antics is probably my favorite example of this – Scotty Huff and Robert Reynolds took the 11 poems that Judy Sierra wrote for her book about penguins and set them to music!  When we told her what we wanted to do, she was just delighted – she said she actually conceived of the idea as a Broadway musical, but can’t write music herself so she turned it into a picture book instead!
Embarrassing:  I don’t embarrass easily.
Hilarious:  Way too many of those moments to count.  I always say that I have the perfect job, because where else could a group of grown adults actually be paid to stand around a microphone and moo “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?”

4)  What future trends or changing technologies do you think will have the greatest/worst/revolutionary impact on the audiobook production field?

Having just attended my first Odyssey meeting at the annual ALA conference in Chicago, I have to say that I think the creation of the Odyssey Award is having a huge impact in terms of raising awareness and generating enthusiasm for the audiobook as a vital art form.  The enthusiasm and positive energy in that room just knocked my socks off and made me feel excited to be a part of this community.

With regard to changing technologies, I think that there has been a significant impact just in the variety of digital formats that are currently popular – audio CDs, mp3 players, audio downloads, Playaway® players, etc.  Audio content is now available in a wider variety of easily accessible formats than ever before, and I think the number of audiobook listeners out there is increasing exponentially as a result.

5)  What’s new and exciting in your part of the audiobook community?

We’re very excited about the batch of titles we just released this past spring, including Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity, both by Mo Willems, Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s Math Curse, read by Nancy Wu, Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson’s Henry’s Freedom Box, read by Jerry Dixon, and Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s First the Egg, read by Elle Fanning.   We’re currently putting the finishing touches on our fall releases, including David Shannon’s Duck on a Bike, Laurie Keller’s The Scrambled States of American Talent Show, and Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Maris Montes and Yuyi Morales, read by Maria Conchita Alonso.  On many of our new releases we are now including bonus tracks, including songs and author interviews.  We now have 40 Playaway® compilations available.

Thanks so much, Paul, for being our guest. And extra special thanks for bringing Mo & Trixie along! Stop in next Wednesday for another “Inside the Audiobook Studio!”

I’ve mentioned the AUDIOBOOKS discussion group before, but want to give the online community another shout-out. Click here for how to sign up and join in the discussion of your favorite titles & narrators! The conversation has been lagging a bit, but I’m doing my part by recommending one of my all-time favorite audiobooks The Art of Racing in the Rain.  See the message below & my response:

From: George Hodgkins
Subject: Hello out there

It’s been very, very quiet around here recently. Kink of spooky. Good time to ask if anyone’s a fan of James Rollins’ audiobooks. I’m almost finished with “The Judas Strain” and have “The Last Oracle” queued up. I’m a fan of “potential end of the word as we know it unless X and Y find Z” fiction – though I’ll probably listen to “The Art of Racing in the Rain” before moving on to “The Last Oracle.” Anyone else like historical paranoia or talking dogs?

George

My response:

Oh, you MUST listen to The Art of Racing in the Rain – of the most amazing audiobooks I’ve ever clapped my ears on! And if you are at all a dog person, set aside some time to just stay still and listen – it’s that affecting. There are very, very few audiobooks that have stopped me in my tracks and demanded the attention of all my senses. I usually must be doing some automatic task to listen well – odd, but true – and typically if I sit still while listening, I lose my concentration and pick up something nearby to read. But Christopher Evan Welch took me by the scruff of the neck and pulled me so completely into his first-person narration as Enzo, the mixed breed dog who ruminates on the meaning of life and death. You will want to share this audiobook with everyone you know – I have and every single person has fallen in love with Enzo. Truly great listening for adults & teens

Mary Burkey

Thanks, realjohngreen, for the Twitter alert!

Audiobook fans, mark your calendars now: Monday 7/13, 3:30-5:30pm, McCormick Place West in W-470b. This is a free event, no ticket needed. Grab your seats early, as last year this was a standing-room only event -I even spotted a few Newbery-award winners sitting on the floor! The Odyssey Award recognizes excellence in the production of audiobooks for children & young adults, and is sponsored by ALSC, YALSA, and Booklist. The 2009 Odyssey Awards Presentation and Reception will include appearances by  Sherman Alexie, Mirron Willis, and Katherine Kellgren. Refreshments at the Odyssey celebration are courtesy of the Audio Publishers Association. Come recognize the work of the best and brightest in audiobook publishing – and the hard-working members of the 2009 Odyssey Award committee. Hope to see you there!