Adam Abeshouse, a Grammy Award-winning producer of classical music for more than 30 years who also ran a foundation that helps fund the recording of works not supported by major labels, died on Oct. 10 at his home in South Salem, N.Y., in Westchester County. He was 63.
His wife, Maria Abeshouse, said the cause was bile duct cancer.
Mr. Abeshouse, who was also a concert violinist, was prolific: Starting in the early 1990s, he produced (and often engineered and edited) hundreds of albums. Among the musicians he worked with were the violinists Joshua Bell and Itzhak Perlman, the pianists Simone Dinnerstein, Garrick Ohlsson, Leon Fleisher and Lara Downes, and the Kronos Quartet. In 2000, he won the Grammy for classical music producer of the year.
Musicians described Mr. Abeshouse as a technically brilliant and joyful producer.
“He had so many different qualities necessary for recording, but you don’t expect them all to be contained in one person,” said Ms. Dinnerstein, who recorded 14 albums with Mr. Abeshouse, including her newest, “The Eye Is the First Circle,” which documents a 2021 performance of Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata.
“He had a fantastic, acute ear,” she added. “He knew how to do a recording session; he knew when you needed a break or needed to move on or to be pushed. He was an amazing engineer; he knew all about sound, microphones, acoustics, and had a huge array of vintage microphones.
“And he was astonishingly good at editing. From all the takes in a session, putting them together was almost like being a sculptor.”
Mr. Bell said that Mr. Abeshouse’s background as a violinist helped their collaborations.
“He was a wonderful violinist; he didn’t just hack away at it,” Mr. Bell recalled, adding that Mr. Abeshouse helped him get past his perfectionism in the studio.
“He was focused on the story you were trying to tell, not the little details,” he continued. “He’d say, ‘Listen to this take. It may not be perfect, but I think we should leave it in.’ It was useful to have those ears.”
In 2004, while recording the complete chamber music of Prokofiev with members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the violinist Ida Kavafian told The New York Times that Mr. Abeshouse was “part psychologist.”
During a playback, Ms. Kavafian told Mr. Abeshouse she was unhappy with her violin, a J.B. Guadagnini made in 1752. “It loses a certain beauty of sound when you get close to it,” she said.
He reassured her and then made a small but important adjustment to the placement of her microphone. He also offered suggestions to her and the pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, including “I want to get that rocking feeling here.”
Satisfied with the help he provided, Mr. Abeshouse said, “Sometimes, if you give them little clues, it unlocks something and opens up new vistas for them.”
The Prokofiev recording was one of a number that benefited from Mr. Abeshouse’s creation in 2002 of the Classical Recording Foundation, which provides seed money to record artists’ interpretations of works, both new and existing, that are musically worthy but have little commercial priority.
“I’ve had people tell me, ‘I already have a copy of Beethoven’s violin concertos,’” he told The New Yorker in 2002. “‘Why would I need another one?’ But does anyone invoke that sort of reasoning when it comes to great tennis matches or baseball games? If that axiom applied to sporting events, the stadiums would be empty.”
In 2023, Mr. Abeshouse won a Grammy for producing “Letters for the Future,” which Time for Three — a vocal and instrumental ensemble of two violinists and a double bassist — recorded with the foundation’s help.
“Adam’s Classical Recording Foundation is the manifestation of his love and his labor,” Time for Three said in an Instagram message shortly before his death.
Adam Abeshouse was born on June 5, 1961, in Westbury, N.Y., on Long Island. His father, Jack, an amateur pianist, was an executive at J. Manheimer, which sold flavor extracts and fragrances. His mother, Evelyn (Kolbrenner) Abeshouse, was a medical researcher. His paternal grandfather played in the Imperial Russian Balalaika Orchestra.
Adam was introduced to the violin by his third-grade teacher and was named concertmaster of the youth and college orchestras he joined. He majored in jazz at New York University and earned a bachelor’s degree in 1983.
While at N.Y.U., he met Maria Janetti, a fellow student, when he asked her to play piano for his junior recital in 1982. They married four years later.
In addition to his wife, who teaches choral music at Pelham Memorial High School and Pelham Middle School in Westchester County, Mr. Abeshouse is survived by his daughters, Emily and Sarah Abeshouse, and his brother, David.
Mr. Abeshouse received a Master of Music degree in violin performance from the Manhattan School of Music in 1985. By then he had begun his performing career, which included stints with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (from until arthritis caused him to end the association in 2016), the American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, the Concordia Orchestra and the Metropolitan String Quartet.
“He was always interested in technology and recording, and when we had our first house in Queens, he built a recording studio in our basement,” Ms. Abeshouse said. “He recorded a lot of people’s audition tapes for college admissions and orchestras, and discovered he was really good at it.”
He turned to producing in the early 1990s; a turning point was his production of Mr. Ohlsson’s “Chopin: The Complete Piano Works, Vol. 4 — Scherzi & Variations.” He received a Grammy for best classical instrumental solo performance for producing and engineering another Ohlsson album, “Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 3,” in 2008.
In an interview last month with NPR, Mr. Abeshouse said: “I worked very hard for my clients. I was devoted to them. From the devotion to the clients, I developed this theory that the best thing that I could do for my clients is make them feel safe and loved, and create an atmosphere in the recording session to do their best.”
His passion for recording was evident in the design and construction of his state-of-the-art studio, with a performance space and choir loft, next to a barn on his property in South Salem. It was nearly finished when he learned this spring that he had cancer.
Ms. Downes organized a farewell concert at the studio on Sept. 27 that included her performance of Jake Heggie’s “Facing Forward” as well as performances by Mr. Bell, Ms. Dinnerstein, Mr. Ohlsson, Time for Three, the pianist Jeremy Denk and the composer and pianist Kevin Puts.
Mr. Abeshouse sat in a wheelchair a few feet from the artists he had nurtured. He was frail, and his breathing was labored.
“I felt overwhelmed by the feeling that this was the last time I was going to play for him,” said Ms. Dinnerstein, who performed the aria from Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, which she recorded in 2007 with Mr. Abeshouse as her producer.
“He rallied more than you can imagine,” Ms. Downes said. “I saw him sit forward in his chair the way he always did. It was miraculous.”
Mr. Bell played two pieces, including the Mendelssohn aria “Ah, ritorna, età dell’oro,” with his wife, the soprano Larisa Martinez, and the pianist Peter Dugan. “Here we were,” he said, “giving tribute to him in his dream house, this thing he created in every aspect, surrounded by the musicians he worked with and who loved him.”
He added: “We knew he wouldn’t be around much longer. It was both sad and incredibly joyous.”
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