![]() “We had one serious structural issue,” Storyk recalls. Still, at the 11th hour, it almost didn’t happen. She has the top two floors, 10 and 11, and while the space is not huge, it can fit a full band and it feels much bigger thanks to the floor-to-ceiling windows. It’s a new building in a hot area of Manhattan, with galleries moving in, new restaurants and a luxury hotel set to open right next door. She looked at upward of 50 spaces during the course of two years before signing off on 520 West 27th. She knew from the beginning that she wanted multiple rooms and a north-south facing layout, with plenty of light. Building The Oven taught Mincieli that she, as an engineer, could bring a real perspective to the design as a whole, and not just the sound. It was the laboratory, the incubator for the design process, Storyk says. Mincieli has plenty of A-list engineering credits, but it’s her association with Keys, and the build-out of her The Oven Studios in Long Island in 2005, that led to Jungle City. “You give the artists the service, and it pays off.” “I want it to be a Record Plant of the East Coast,” Mincieli says. It’s a studio with the style and service of what Mincieli calls a seven-star hotel, from the Louis Vitton fabric on the monitor wall in the Euphonix room, to the 2,400 square feet of rooftop space with panoramic views of Manhattan, to real silverware and table service. A band flew in from Japan, indicating that New York can become a destination again. Bono stopped by to take a look and by all accounts loved it. Since January, Keys has been in, Beyonce and Kelly Clarkson, too. The work is still there, and I’m getting incredible gigs.” They were the example and they raised the bar. I wanted to give the city a shot in the arm and remind everyone that, ‘Hey, there is still a music community, there are still artists based out of here.’ I believe Troy Germano and his family are a major reason there is a recording community in New York. This is where the music industry lives and breathes. “I am from here, I do most of my work here, but I felt like New York had fallen a few notches over the past couple of years. “I really wanted to do something incredible for New York,” Mincieli says. To borrow a phrase from Buckminster Fuller, this studio is ‘the bare maximum.’ The studio is exactly what’s required-architecturally, acoustically, electrically and creature comfort-wise-for her marketplace. Everywhere you turn, in every aspect of the studio, she has gone the full distance. She is a consummate professional, and she surrounds herself with real pros. ![]() “She’s been doing this for 20 years and has world-class clients. “This is Annie’s moment,” says John Storyk, principal designer on the project and the head of Walters-Storyk Design Group. She’s wanted her own place for a while, and now she has a real jewel. About a dozen years ago, she began working with Alicia Keys and was instrumental in building out The Oven Studios, where she became enamored of the design process. She has taken guitar lessons from Carlos Alomar and can deconstruct a fretboard. She learned how to take apart an SSL and made modifications on a 9000 J Series when Quad got the first three. It’s owned and operated by engineer Ann Mincieli, who for more than 20 years has been a fixture in the local recording community,assisting all around town, engineering big records and earning the respect of her peers across the country. Well, sometimes our parents are right, and nowhere is that more evident than on this month’s cover, Jungle City Studios, opened in January of this year on West 27th Street in New York City’s up-and-coming High Line district. ![]() Then later we hear it from college professors, who tell us that with good grades we will get a good job, if we do the work and do it well, we will be rewarded. Parents tell us this almost before we can talk, then teachers, Little League coaches, instructors of private music lessons. We’re taught from a very young age that hard work pays off, that if we practice, put in the hours and hone a skill, we will find success. ![]()
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