Today we’d like to introduce you to Gustavo Celis.
Gustavo Celis is a nine-time Grammy Award winning engineer producer, living in Davie, Florida. Over the last quarter-century he has worked with extraordinary artists such as Shakira, Eric Clapton, Beyonce, Ricky Martin, Jewel, Thalia, Roger Waters, Jennifer Lopez, Celine Dion, Pharrell Williams, Alejandro Sanz, Gloria Estefan, Fito Paez, Jimmy Buffett, Gustavo Cerati, Mercedes Sosa, Timbaland, Paulina Rubio, Maná, Chino y Nacho, Yanni, Marc Anthony, Diego Torres, Miguel Bose, and Ruben Blades.
His engineering work has over 12 billion combined views on YouTube and includes songs like “Hips Don’t Lie,” “Andas en Mi Cabeza,” “La Mordidita,” “Waka Waka,” and “La Tortura.” In the 80’s he started his musical journey playing drums and keyboards in several bands and making recordings to promote them on local radio.
By the early 90’s he was attending Berklee College of Music, where he studied Music Production and Engineering, graduating with Magna Cum Laude distinction in 1994. During his time at Berklee, he received the Berklee Achievement Scholarship as well as the Mix Magazine Award. Immediately after graduation, he was recruited by one of the top recording studios in the world: The Hit Factory in NYC, where he witnessed sessions with some of the best artists of the time including Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Paul Simon, Puff Daddy, and David Bowie.
Celis’s work ethic and talent have paid off ever since; he has been the recipient of nine Recording Academy Awards. Two Grammy Awards for his work with Gloria Estefan in 2000 and R. Blades in 2001, plus seven Latin Grammy Awards for projects with Ricky Martin, Thalia, Shakira, Carlos Vives, and Alejandro Sanz, including two for Best Engineering.
In the early 2000’s Gustavo started working with Emilio Estefan at Crescent Moon Studios in Miami and soon became the “go-to” guy for many Latin artists passing through the studio, including Ricky Martin and Shakira, who in the year 2005 asked him to become her main engineer. He proceeded to record and mix most of her music for the next ten years.
In the year 2003, Celis received critical acclaim for his engineering work on the film “Chicago,” a motion picture that received 13 Academy Award nominations and was awarded a Best Sound Oscar. This movie is known to have re-ignited the Musical genre in the film industry.
On the technical front, Celis has been nominated twice for the TEC Awards for his mix of “La Tortura,” and the 5.1 surround recording and mix of Shakira’s “Oral Fixation Tour” Blu-Ray disc. He has also spearheaded the design and construction of three cutting edge recording studios: Supersonic Studios (2004) in Miami, FL, Elastic Mix (2008) in Pembroke Pines, FL, and his latest The Mix Cabin (2018) in Davie, FL.
Celis has mixed numerous live TV broadcasts, including the MTV Music Awards in Miami, American Music Awards in LA, Live with Jonathan Ross at the BBC in London, Fashion Rocks from Radio City in NYC, and Shakira Live at the United Nations’ General Assembly in 2015.
He has also worked in many of the best studios across the globe, such as The Hit Factory NYC, Olympic London, MSR Studios NYC, SARM West London, Air Lyndhurst London, Metalworks Toronto, Criteria Miami, Compass Point Bahamas, Studio Guillaume Tell Paris, Crescent Moon Miami, Henson Recording Studios LA, Sony Music Studios Mexico and NY, as well as many others.
In 2019 Gustavo received the Berklee Alumni Achievement Award, this is a special award that honors the best of Berklee. Winners are chosen as a result of a juried process involving a list of hundreds of their most notable alumni.
At the moment Celis is producing an album for André Aires a prodigy from Portugal as well as recording and mixing the sophomore album for country-pop singer-songwriter Caroline Jones, an artist whose development he has been involved since her debut album “Bare Feet.” This summer he mixed her performance of “Tough Guys” at the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Well it is the music business and as the great Hunter S. Thompson said: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” It is never easy in music but as long as you stay true to your craft and never stop growing the rewards are immense.
Please tell us about your music.
I specialize in music mixing and production and I am mostly known for recording and mixing Shakira’s biggest hits and for the Oscar winning soundtrack for the movie “Chicago”.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I have always been interested in the intersection between art & technology. I was a 70’s kid that embraced the dawn of the PC and by age 12 I was programming a Sinclair computer and playing drums every second I could. So I spent countless hours in my bedroom experimenting with code and musical instruments. One of my favorite childhood memories has to be making my first recordings using two cassette players in my bedroom. I used to play drums straight into the first cassette and then I would play a synth or a guitar as I recorded the output of the first deck mixed with the new instrument into a second cassette recorder. Of course, it was great to build a whole song just by myself but by the time I recorded all the parts the first tracks sounded terrible, so I kept trying different strategies to improve these primitive recordings. As you can imagine this is the main reason I started my quest to understand how to make songs and capture sounds. Since then I have never stopped learning and experimenting with the very same principles, the only difference is that now people pay me good money for it but the thrill of discovery remains the same and it is the real reason I go to the studio every day. Still a child, foolish and playful and always soaking it in.
Contact Info:
- Address: 15751 Sheridan Street
No. 201
Ft. Lauderdale FL 33331 - Website: www.MasterCelis.com
- Phone: 786 373 3477
- Email: info@celismix.com
- Instagram: @guscelis
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSTRCelis
Image Credit:
Garry Rottger & Enrique Castro & Sam Allison
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