For more than 40 years, The Evergreen Stage has been making music history. The state-of-the-
art recording facility located in the heart of Burbank, with its massive 3,000-square-foot live room, has been the studio of choice for some of your favorite musical artists, and the site where many of your favorite songs have been recorded.
With a complete range of accommodations for both digital and analog recordings, the studio, until recently owned by DiaDan Holdings, Ltd., earned its well-deserved reputation as the go-to recording facility for artists, engineers and producers, both LA-based and those who travel to southern California to ply their trade within its acoustically perfect walls.
If those walls could talk, they’d tell you stories about the wide and diverse range of singers, musicians, bands, and even symphony orchestras that have spent long days and nights getting just the right sound at the Stage. They include A-listers like Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, Beyonce, Billy Joel, Placido Domingo, and Justin Timberlake, as well as countless up-and-coming artists and many established ones whose careers tend to fly a bit more under the radar. Just last year, San Francisco singer-songwriter-composer Clara Bellino visited The Evergreen Stage to record tracks for her fifth album, Unexpected.
That session, produced by Lenise Bent and engineered by Cyrus Shamir, featured vocal contributions by Chicago native and Los Angeles-based singer LZ Love. LZ Love is a soulful and exciting to watch singer whose eclectic musical background encompasses rhythm & blues, gospel, funk, dance, and blues. Her career began while still a teenager in her hometown. She went on to work as a background singer for Sylvester in San Francisco, then later toured as a background singer, recorded and even opened for such artists such as The Alabama Shakes, James Brown, Damian Marley, Michael Franti and Spearhead, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Luther Vandross, Clarence Clemons, Mary Wells, and Walter and Edwin Hawkins. At one point, legendary funk band Parliament/Funkadelic asked her to join the group, but at the time, LZ was taking care of her mother, Florida, and opted for family over career.
Bellino was thrilled to have Love as a guest vocalist on her album. During the recording session, Bellino posted on social media that Love sounded like an angel. Although Bellino began recording Unexpected up north in Emeryville, CA, she traveled to Burbank to continue and complete the project at The Evergreen Stage with her old friend Lenise Bent in the producer’s chair. The two women initially met in 2013 when they sat on panels at the Independent Music Conference and developed a friendship.
Bent, a Los Angeles native and alumnus of UCLA, Cal State Long Beach and SoundMasters Recording Institute (one of the only audio recording schools at the time), began working as an assistant engineer in 1976 and eventually became a chief engineer and producer. Her numerous credits include Aja by Steely Dan, Breakfast in America by Supertramp and Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. As an engineer who worked with legendary producer Mike Chapman, she worked on albums for such artists ads The Knack and Suzi Quatro, and became the first woman to receive an RIAA Platinum album after engineering Blondie’s AutoAmerican. In addition to hiring skilled musicians for Bellini’s sessions at The Evergreen Stage, a secondary criteria was that they be talented and nice. Ultimately, four musicians--Richie Onori, Jeff Turmes, Fabrice Vignati and Phil Parlapiano (a veteran who’s worked with John Prine, Rod Stewart, Carlene Carter, Alannah Myles, Grant Lee Buffalo)--recorded 20 instruments. Bellini prepared for the project by going through dozens of songs and narrowing down the album’s themes, which included love and distance, lost love, the power of dreams, kids and innocence, unbreakable spiritual bonds, trust, seduction and karma. She then listened to a number of her favorite albums and considered some of her favorite sounds and how they could be creatively combined; for example, kneading a loaf of bread on a flour dusted board or the sound of an eagle’s wings. To all this she added music and vocals. Unexpected was released during summer 2018. Bellino is a unique talent who has created a distinctive musical and vocal experience.