About Living Archive

In the summer of 2003, the idea started for Living Archive.

I have been performing on the violin since the age of 8. One thing that happened as I did more and more performances is that I often felt very sad that particular performances were not recorded. There was often the feeling that something special had occurred, that a unique beauty had come to life. It was wonderful to know that performers and audience members might treasure a memory of the event, but sad that there was so often no chance of revisiting the events of the concert, enjoying them again, studying them, learning more from them.

I accumulated more and more experience watching the process of making recordings with various engineers, and as I was exposed to their setups, I started to realize that it was not so far-fetched to create a mobile recording rig that I could set up myself at the concerts which we gave.

I started to ask each of the engineers that I worked with their advice about how this might work, and I feel lucky that the engineers I worked with were most generous in sharing with me their thoughts.

Eventually I purchased a set of Schoeps microphones fixed in an ORTF configuration. Engineers very wisely suggested that these microphones would provide first class recording quality and because of their fixed position would work very well in quick setups. I have found their advice to have been wonderful. I also receive the very helpful suggestion from the audio engineers at New England Conservatory of using a very good package called the M-Box (package because it is an integrated set of mic prea-amps and sortware for editing)

Also, a Sony TRV-900 3 chip digital video camera was recommended to me, again a wonderful suggestion.

Starting in 2003, I began to document on audio and video, all of the concerts which I was not prevented from recording. I have done my best to produce audio and video records of the concerts I have given at the highest quality level available to me.

Recently, a higher level of video quality has become available, and responding to the wearing out of the Sony camera, I upgraded Living Archive's video camera to the Canon XL-H1, an absolutely fantastic compact High Definition video camera.

Living Archive has to date archived hundreds of concerts and they are all preserved as carefully as possible. The archives of these concerts have been made available to audience members as CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes. These have been ordered through the mail and online, but we are now planning to operate principally out of www.livingarchive.org

A few people have been so instrumental in the buildup of Living Archive. First of all, my colleagues in the Borromeo String Quartet: Yeesun Kim, Mai Motobuchi, Kristopher Tong and Will Fedkenheuer. They have had such courage in working with a very unconventionally exposed way of interacting with the audience members where audience members have access to ordering most any of the quartet's live concerts. Then my thanks goes to Joseph Correia, who has been intimately involved with planning all the stages of the Living Archive activities and has always had a inspiring faith in the value of the project. Then my thanks goes to Jaehyun Ahn who has worked with me in building and rebuilding all of the aspects of the technical workings of Living Archive. He and I have been assisted recently also by Jimin Kwon. Both Jaehyun and Jimin began working with me through internships through the Berklee College of Music. But finally, the people who perhaps deserve the greatest thanks of all are Yeesun Kim Kitchen and Christopher Kitchen. Yeesun is my colleague in the quartet but also my wife and partner in life, and Christopher is our 4 year old son. Yeesun has been enduringly patient with the unreasonable expenses and hours of building something such as Living Archive, and Christopher has been beautifully understanding of the demands placed on his daddy by the many hats his daddy wears.

Living Archive
241 Perkins St. #E202
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
www.livingarchive.org

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