Rudy Van Gelder

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Rudy Van Gelder (born November 2, 1924 in Jersey City, New Jersey) is a recording engineer specialising in jazz.

One of the legendary backroom figures in Jazz, Rudy Van Gelder started out as a hobbyist recording friends in his parents living room in Hackensack, New Jersey, while working by day as an optometrist. One of these friends, baritone saxophonist Gil Melle, introduced Van Gelder to Blue Note Records producer Alfred Lion around 1952. The meeting led to the start of an illustrious career, and as a result, Van Gelder is most associated with the Blue Note label in the minds of Jazz enthusiasts.

Within a few years Van Gelder was in demand by many other independent labels based around New York, including Prestige Records and Savoy Records.

In the summer of 1959 Van Gelder moved his operations to a larger studio, in Englewood Cliffs, a few miles south east of the original location. The structure, inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and bearing some resemblance to a chapel, is usually described as "purpose-built", but his parents' home had actually been built with its secondary use in mind.

Van Gelder has recorded many of the great names in jazz, including Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter and others. In the mid-1950s, Monk even composed a piece in tribute, called "Hackensack." It was in Englewood Cliffs where John Coltrane recorded his legendary A Love Supreme album for Impulse Records in 1964. Other labels, such as Verve Records, made use of the new facility while Blue Note and Prestige continued their association with Van Gelder for several years. CTI Records recorded a series of popular (if not critically highly regarded) albums at the studio in the 1970s.

Van Gelder's recording techniques are often admired for the warmth and presence he brings to the end result. However, this view is not universally shared. Critics point out that his recorded piano sound in vintage recordings can seem thin and recessed.

Today, Van Gelder continues to be active. In recent years he has been busy remastering the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades ago into 24-bit digital recordings, in the ongoing RVG Edition series.