At the start of Pride Month, I decided I should spend the month researching and discovering the LGBTQIA+ music makers in the audio industry. After almost a month of digging around, I’m proud (get it?) to write a piece celebrating engineers and producers who, like me, are part of the LGBTQIA+ community. A couple of friends asked me why this article should be written. Shouldn’t we just celebrate good engineers/producers and leave the personal stuff out? After all, there’s no evidence to suggest that your sexual orientation affects your hearing in either a negative or positive way. 

That being said, I do believe that our experiences shape who we are and influence the decisions we make. Since producers are often the ones making decisions about how a song should sound or be arranged, I started to wonder who my fellow queer engineers are and what kind of music they make and work they do. I turned to Google and found a list on Wikipedia of LGBTQIA+ people in the industry that only included nine names and excluded some of the most prominent engineers in the industry. So I decided to make my own, slightly longer, list.

While this is definitely not an all-inclusive list, I’ve written a couple of paragraphs about those in the recording industry who have made notable contributions in their field, and most importantly, who are already publicly out. After that, I have a short list of “Honorable Mentions,” engineers and producers whose careers I’ve been following and can’t wait to see what they put out next.

Joe Meek - Sound Engineer/Record Producer

“If it sounds good, it is good.”

Robert George “Joe” Meek (1929-1967) helped pioneer experimental pop music and assisted in developing recording techniques like overdubbing and sampling. His time in the Royal Air Force working as a radar technician deepened his interest in electronics and outer space. Meek’s charting singles included the instrumental “Telstar” by The Tornados (written and produced by Meek) and was the first record by a British rock group to reach number 1 on the US Hot 100. 

Sadly, Meek suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Debt, depression, and added pressure from being homosexual at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK, contributed to Meek’s paranoia and he ended up taking his life at the age of 37, but not before he gifted music with reverb, compression, delay, echo, and DIY ethics. His reputation for experiments in recording music was later acknowledged by the Music Producers Guild who in 2009 created "The Joe Meek Award for Innovation in Production" and in 2014, Meek was ranked the greatest producer of all time by New Musical Express, a British music and culture website. 

Clive Davis - Record Producer

“To call me anything other than bisexual would be inaccurate”

Born in 1932, Clive Davis is best known for launching artists such as Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, and Whitney Houston. He has won five GRAMMY Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer in 2000. In 2013, Davis publicly came out in his autobiography, “The Soundtrack of My Life,” and told Katie Couric that he hoped his coming out would lead to “greater understanding” of bisexuality.

Working with notables such as Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Aerosmith, and Carlos Santana, Davis helped pave the way for trends in pop, rock, and folk that have continued for decades. Clive Davis was the president of Columbia Records from 1967-1973 before founding Arista Records and J Records. He was then the chair and CEO of RCA Music Group and of BMG North America. As of 2018, he is the Chief Creative Officer of Sony Music Entertainment.

Wendy Carlos - Synthesist/Sound Engineer 

“Transsexuality is a crash course in dealing with the fear of rejection.”

Wendy Carlos was born in 1939. After pursuing a hybrid major in music and physics at Brown University, she earned an M.A. in music composition at Columbia University. Upon graduation, Carlos worked as a recording engineer and befriended Robert Moog, the creator of the iconic Moog synthesizer. But it was Wendy who popularized the instrument and electronic music as a new genre. Carlos hit platinum sales status with her 1968 recording Switched-On Bach, which became the first Platinum selling classical album, won three GRAMMY Awards, and propelled the Moog synthesizer into the public consciousness. 

She introduced the use of vocoders for synthesized singing in her score for Stanley Kubrick's film, A Clockwork Orange which came along at a challenging time in Carlos’s life. Carlos is a transgendered woman who had been medically transitioning in stealth for three years and living as a woman for two. In 1979, she publicly came out as trans in an interview with Playboy. After recording several more albums in a classical vein, Carlos wrote horror music for Kubrick's The Shining, and composed the score for the 1982 Disney film Tron. The latter score established a continuous blend between symphonic orchestra and digital and analog synthesizers, an often imitated combination.

Leslie Ann Jones - Music Director/Sound Engineer

“…being who I was and bringing that to whatever session I was doing was the most important thing I could do.”

Jones is a multiple Grammy Award-winning recording engineer. Born in 1951, Leslie’s introduction to the music business started at a very young age. She is the daughter of singer Helen Grayco and her husband, novelty drummer, percussionist and bandleader Spike Jones. Musician friends of Leslie’s parents were always visiting the family home, and that led to Leslie being exposed to a wide variety of musical styles and sounds. Leslie Ann Jones's first engineering job was at ABC Studios working as a production engineer, making copies of recordings. She worked as an assistant engineer for several years, until being asked by John Mayall to lead the engineering of his live concert album Lots of People in 1977.

In 1978, Jones moved north to San Francisco, California to work at The Automatt where Jones recorded many cues for the Apocalypse Now soundtrack and engineered for the likes of Herbie Hancock and Carlos Santana. In 1987, Jones moved back to Los Angeles to work at the iconic Capitol Records. Ten years later, Leslie Ann Jones began working with Skywalker Sound, where she continues to the present as Director of Music Recording and Scoring.

Linda Perry - Record Producer/Songwriter

"All my life I've loved women, and that's it. I've never been any other way."

Born in 1965, Linda Perry is a singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. She was the lead singer and primary songwriter of 4 Non Blondes, and her work as a producer and songwriter showcases a range of talents that have come to define the sound of contemporary music. She has founded two record labels and composed and produced hit songs for several artists including "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera; "What You Waiting For?" by Gwen Stefani; and "Get the Party Started" by Pink. Perry has also contributed to albums by Adele, Alicia Keys, and Courtney Love. Perry was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.

In 2000, Perry was contacted by pop rock singer Pink, seeking production and songwriting assistance on her second album. Perry co-wrote and produced much of Pink's successful album Missundaztood, which brought Perry back into the spotlight as a music producer. Since then, she has worked with many artists, including Jewel, Alicia Keys, Celine Dion, Melissa Etheridge, Solange Knowles, Kelly Osbourne, James Blunt, and Cheap Trick. In 2019, Linda Perry became the 7th woman to ever be nominated in the Producer category of the GRAMMYs.

Barb Morrison - Record Producer/Singer-Songwriter

“I started to understand that my gender was fluid, the same way music was.”

Barb Morrison was born in 1967 and began their musical journey at the age of 7 by learning piano and later, saxophone. They joined their first punk band at the age of 14 as a drummer before moving to New York. While still a teenager, Barb was already playing sax with punk legends Sylvain Sylvain, Johnny Thunders, and Cherry Vanilla. In 1987, they joined the band 'Gutterboy' as a saxophone player, guitarist, and back up singer. As a band, they toured with Bryan Adams, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Stray Cats, and Ramones. 

Barb is best known as a producer for artists such as Blondie, Rufus Wainwright, and Franz Ferdinand and as a film score composer. They were featured in a New York Times article where their accomplishments, as well as their personal and professional struggles were recognized. 'Harley Loco' and Blue Microphones released a mini-documentary about Barb's work as a music producer called "Harley Loco and Blue Microphones present Barb Morrison." In 2014, they spoke on the Gender Amplified panel at Barnard College, and they were a featured film score composer on ASCAP's 2014 "Spotlight."

Heidi Trefethen - Musician/Recording Engineer

With a multifaceted career as a classical and Jazz French Hornist, multi-instrumentalist and sought-after sound engineer, Heidi travels the world frequently, in roles both onstage and off. As a hornist, she has performed in numerous ensembles and venues in Italy, the UK, Bosnia, Thailand, Guatemala, Israel Turkey, Vietnam, and the US, including the LA Philharmonic, the JazzUp Festival in Italy, Cleveland's Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame, SF's Davies Symphony Hall and SFJAZZ's Miner Hall. She has repeatedly been awarded the Principal Horn with the Rome Festival Orchestra and Il Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, and played with Giasscritto and Ottomania, two jazz ensembles of Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera, under Claudio Cimpanelli’s direction. In 2015, she taught a Master Class and performed for the Horn Studio Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand with her horn duo, MediusTerra. 

As a live engineer, she has worked with Shawn Colvin, Meshell N'degeocello, Odetta, Herb Alpert and Lani Hall, Joan Baez, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, Madeleine Peyroux, Roberta Flack, Don McLean, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Holly Near, Dar Williams, Bill Frisell, and Lucy Kaplansky, often at the legendary Freight and Salvage in Berkeley, CA. She is also a FOH engineer at SFJAZZ and is a founding member of the SFJAZZ Monday Night Band and plays in many Bay Area orchestras. Heidi studied at the California Recording Institute’s intensive sound engineering program. An internship at the historic Coast Recorders and a job at Rocket Lab mastering house had her working side-by-side with technical heavyweights such as Bryan Bell and Michael Romanowski. Heidi’s engineering credits include Tammy Hall’s “Blue Soul,” Jessica Jones and Mark Taylor’s “Live at the Freight,” Lucy Kaplansky’s "Kaplansky Sings Kaplanksy," Michael Burles' "Untitled," Nestler and Hawtin's "Duality,” co-engineered with Bryan Bell, and full production of Anne Rainwater's solo piano recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations. A revered educator, she has taught Music Production at the SFJAZZ Digital Lab and since 2014 and teaches Live Sound and Intro to Recording and Music Recording at Women's Audio Mission as well. She is very passionate about promoting women in audio and music, and is a mentor to many women. 

Piper Payne - Mastering Engineer

Piper began her career with a BFA in Audio from The University of Michigan, continuing her graduate education in audio at the University of Stavanger in Norway. In spring of 2019, Piper joined the famed Infrasonic Mastering team, merging her successful Oakland studio, Neato Mastering, with the Nashville based company, owned by Pete Lyman. She is a Trustee of the Recording Academy and she is Co-Chair of the P&E Wing Steering Committee. Piper is a former Governor of the Audio Engineering Society and she is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the AES’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee as well as an active member of Women's Audio Mission and she serves on the Board of SoundGirls.org.

Piper has mastered a wide variety of music including nationally renowned artists Third Eye Blind, LeAnn Rimes, The Go-Go’s, Madame Gandhi, Geographer, The Steven Universe Soundtrack’s composers Aivi and Steven, Basement, Hundredth, Elettrodomestico (Jane Wiedlin/The Go-Go’s), Blithe, ANIIML, Shamir, Betsy, Between You & Me, and Fritz Montana to name a few.

Ainjel Emme - Musician/Record Producer

Born in 1978, Ainjel began her recording career with a Tascam Portastudio and a dream. In the early 2000s, she began releasing music as an independent singer-songwriter in a style that lies somewhere between roots rock and indie, but she often ventures into pop, electronic, alternative music, folk, and even metal. In 2004, Ainjel was waiting tables in a breakfast restaurant in Venice and began quietly tracking new material with her friend, Rob Black; a then-aspiring recording engineer who worked in the restaurant's kitchen. That album, Everything Is Beautiful, was recorded over the span of a year and was released in 2011. 

While mixing Everyone is Beautiful at Threshold Sound + Vision in Santa Monica, Ainjel was offered an opportunity to apprentice at the studio and began the shift toward full-time record production. This led to a job in the studio at Interscope Geffen A&M, where she worked as an engineering and studio assistant for three years. In 2015, she co-founded Block of Joy, a multimedia production house and private recording facility where she has worked on records for artists such as Aly & AJ, Trick Gum, and Paper Citizen.

Kaytranada

“It’s so wack [to lie]. This is another step in my life.”

Kaytranada (Louis Kevin Celestin) was born in 1992 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Shortly after he was born, his family relocated to Montreal where he was raised. Kaytranada began to DJ at the age of 14. The following year, at 15, he began to produce after his brother introduced him to FL Studio. He and his brother, Lou Phelps make up the hip hop duo, The Celestics. In December 2014, he signed an exclusive recording agreement with XL Recordings. During 2015, Kaytranada opened for two nights of Madonna's Rebel Heart Tour, one in Canada and one in the United States. In 2019, he released his sophomore album, Bubba, for which he won two Grammy Awards including Best Dance/Electronic Album, becoming the first Black artist to win that category. 

Kaytranda came out in an interview with The Fader in 2016, saying “Growing up with a lot of friends who are making homophobic remarks, it’s kind of like, ‘Damn, I don’t want nobody to know that I’m that person.’” His goal since his early days had always been to produce for rappers, but he found himself pushed by unexpected success into DJing and making remixes. Madonna personally called and asked if he’d be her opening tour DJ, which he did on a few dates of her North American run. 

Christina Paakari - Audio Engineer and Producer

Christina Paakkari is an audio engineer for Capitol Records, producing iconic records since the late 80’s and the recipient of a 2005 Grammy Award for her work on the Dianne Reeves album Good Night, and Good Luck, for a total of three Grammy wins. Christina has worked with acclaimed artists such as The Carpenters, Bette Midler, Elton John, LeAnn Rimes and even Ozzy Osborne. 

A Graduate of UC Berkeley, Christina is a former chairperson at AES whose credits include Oingo Boingo, Pat Benatar, and James Taylor. She has also received several Grammy nominations and 2 Emmys. Continuously pushing the limits of recording technology, Christina discovers new ideas and uses for the tools of the trade. She dabbles on various instruments to understand how tone can be creatively captured and believes that collaboration is where the creation begins. Christina has a life-long dedication to audio production, working on albums, films and TV Scores for live broadcast, remote and commercial production. Growing up she played in various bands, and ‘got the recording bug’ early on. She moved to L.A., working in a record warehouse by day and a 2-room studio at night, pro bono until a paid position opened.

Desmond Child - Songwriter and Producer

John Charles Barrett (born October 28, 1953), known professionally as Desmond Child, is an American songwriter and producer. His career started when he formed an R&B-influenced pop rock band, Desmond Child & Rouge, in 1975 with singers Myriam Valle, Maria Vidal, and Diana Grasselli, backed by hired musicians. The band was known for their inclusion on the soundtrack to The Warriors in 1979, with the song "Last of an Ancient Breed", and for the song "Our Love is Insane", which charted at #51 in the Billboard Hot 100. Their two albums received positive reviews but sold poorly and the group disbanded in 1980. Desmond produced Meat Loaf's album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, and co-wrote six of its songs. Other artists he has worked with include Kiss, Cher, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Bonnie Tyler, Dream Theater, Per Gessle, Ricky Martin, Selena Gomez, and Kelly Clarkson.

These days, Desmond lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his husband, Curtis Shaw, and their twin sons, Roman and Nyro. The couple's struggle to have a baby via surrogacy is recounted in the documentary Two: The Story of Roman & Nyro. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008.

Sara Carter - Sound Engineer and Mixer

Sara Carter is a BBC trained mixing engineer based in Basingstoke in the UK. Sara started recording and mixing music in the mid ’90s from a small home studio as a hobby. In 2000, at the somewhat ripe age of 34, she decided to turn that hobby into a full-time career. She studied Audio Engineering at the SAE Institute in London and then went on to work for the BBC in London as a Studio Manager (Sound Engineer). There she engineered many of the UK’s most popular radio shows and live music sessions.

Working from the BBC’s famous Maida Vale Studios, she developed her skills by working with a wide variety of artists on numerous sessions and has been credited on records by Corrine Bailey Rae and KT Tunstall among others. In 2009, Sara decided to take a break from broadcasting and left the BBC to explore a somewhat different career in craft brewing. However, in 2016, she felt a strong calling back to music and returned with her online mixing and mastering business serving unsigned rock and indie bands from all over the world. Her current mission is to help home studio musicians and music producers mix music to a professional standard through tutorials on her YouTube channel, Simply Mixing.

Honorable Mentions

Arca - Musician, Record Producer, Mixing Engineer - Barcelona, Spain

A Venezuelan musician, singer, composer, record producer, who has contributed production work to artists such as Björk, Kanye West, FKA twigs, Kelela, and Frank Ocean.

Rie Daisies - Singer/Songwriter, Producer - Jackson, Michigan, USA

Rie has shared her personal story in an educational article exploring the role of music and creative expression in her experiences as a transgender student, which was published by The Journal of Research in Music Education.

Jess Fenton - Recording and Mixing Engineer - Brooklyn, New York, USA

A producer of music and podcasts, Jess also started a video series called Proof in Music which showcases women working in audio.

Catharine Wood - Mixing and Mastering Engineer - Los Angeles, California, USA

As a mix and mastering engineer, she has engineered over 500 commercially released songs – including her own custom compositions which have aired on NBC, ABC, BBC, ESPN and more.

Misha Alexander - Audio Engineer - Des Moines, Iowa, USA

Audio Engineer at Speed of Sound and Gas Lamp, Misha is also a guitarist with rock band Aren’t We All.

Eris Drew - DJ, Producer - Chicago, Illinois, USA

Eris runs the T4T LUV NRG recording label with her loving b2b partner Octo Octa from a log cabin in New Hampshire. Together, they are BBC Radio 1 residents for the 2020 Spring/Summer season.

Anton Kapela - Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Anton has spent decades in research and development for global inter-provider networking, routing security, and data center solutions and has spent the pandemic developing technology for low-latency virtual jam sessions.