With the 2004 GRAMMY® Awards on the horizon, we’re excited to announce that our grads are once again all over the who’s who list of this year’s best music. The February 8th, 2004 ceremony, airing live at 8 p.m. on CBS, will showcase a record number of Full Sail alumni – fifty-three grads who worked on forty-three individual projects that have been nominated in thirty-eight separate categories. Even more exciting is the news that seven of those grads are actually nominated directly for their engineering efforts, making them eligible to win a gold statue of their very own. We are thrilled by these accomplishments, and honored by the continued success of our Recording Arts grads living their dreams in the recording industry.

Here’s the breakdown: Over the last decade, a Full Sail grad has worked on every single GRAMMY® Award winning Album of the Year, including Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Carlos Santana’s Supernatural, and Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me. Eight of those ten years have found our grads nominated directly for an engineering award. And every year, on average, forty to fifty alumni work on projects that are nominated for a GRAMMY®.

This year, our former students are represented in a myriad of categories including Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and Best Rap Song. Whether they contributed as engineers, assistant engineers, or sound mixers, they are responsible for creating some of this year’s finest musical selections from the likes of Luther Vandross, Audioslave, Lonestar, The Roots, Missy Elliot, Erykah Badu, Emmylou Harris, Vickie Winans, and Yo-Yo Ma.

As for the seven grads with an opportunity to win their GRAMMY® , they have earned nominations in the Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Engineered Album categories for their work on projects from Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and Outkast. Dylan Dresdow and Robert Hannon are each nominated for two awards, Hannon in both the Record and Album of the Year categories, and Dresdow for Record of the Year as well as Best Engineered Album. The remaining honors belong to Jim Caruana in the Record of the Year slot and Vincent Alexander, Andrew Coleman, Padraic Kerin, and Christopher Wood under the Album of the Year category.

Jay Noble, Full Sail’s Alumni Representative, is proud of the number of grads represented at this year’s event. “We have a record number of Full Sail Recording Arts graduates that are nominated, and it is just amazing when you step back and realize that our graduates are engineering projects in every imaginable side of the industry – pop, rock, Christian, R&B, dance, Latin, blues, country, rap, bluegrass, gospel, and even film soundtracks.”

Every year, the GRAMMY® Award ceremonies prompt massive amounts of project nominations for our grads, in validation of their talent, drive, dreams, and goals. As history repeats itself in 2003, we offer our congratulations to all of the hard-working grads to be honored this year, and best wishes to all of our graduates working hard to bring us the music of the future. We’ll be sure to bring you the results of the GRAMMY®s when the winners are announced.

The Details (Project – Artist – Grad):

NOMINATIONS

Record of the Year

"Crazy In Love" – Beyonce, Feat. Jay Z - Jim Caruana
"Where Is The Love" – The Black Eyed Peas Feat. Justin Timberlake - Dylan Dresdow
"Hey Ya!" – Outkast - Robert Hannon

Album of the Year

Speakerboxxx/The Love Below – Outkast – Vincent Alexander, Robert Hannon, Padraic Kerin, Chris Steffan
Justified – Justin Timberlake – Andrew Coleman & Christopher Wood

Best Engineered Album

Elephunk – The Black Eyed Peas – Dylan Dresdow

FACT SHEET

The following GRAMMY®-winning Album of the Year projects included Full Sail Graduates as assistant engineers or recording engineers in the production process.

• The Bodyguard Original Soundtrack (1993)
• Tony Bennett "MTV Unplugged" (1994)
• Alanis Morissette "Jagged Little Pill" (1995)
• Celine Dion "Falling Into You" (1996)
• Bob Dylan "Time Out Of Mind" (1997)
• Lauryn Hill "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" (1998)
• Carlos Santana "Supernatural" (1999)
• Steely Dan "Two Against Nature" (2000)
• O'Brother Where Art Thou? Original Soundtrack (2001)
• Norah Jones "Come Away With Me" (2002)

Since 1993, Five (5) Full Sail graduates have won GRAMMY® Awards for their audio engineering efforts.

• Leslie Brathwaite
• Carlton Lynn
• John Wydrycs
• Rafael Sardina
• Steven Heller