There are few nights in music more exclusive than In Performance at the White House, the long-running PBS concert series that brings together a number of top recording artists for an intimate performance at the country’s most famous home. The first show of 2010 featured an all-star lineup in celebration of Black History Month, and Full Sail Recording Arts graduate Frank Scheuring recently had the honor of mixing the audio for its national broadcast.

Frank is Senior Mixer/Sound Designer at MVI Post, a Virginia-based media and postproduction facility that produces audio and video for the web, broadcast, cable, and radio. His typical projects include mixing the audio for documentary series, and he has previously created HD 5.1 surround mixes for National Geographic, PBS, and the Discovery Channel. A longtime musician, Frank loved the opportunity to work on a live concert of this scale.

“This was completely different from the stuff I’m used to doing, so it made the whole experience really exciting,” Frank says. “I’ve been involved in music for 23 years, and with being so busy with work I don’t get the chance to do music stuff very often, so being involved with this was very cool for me.”

The series has been a staple of the White House since 1978, and President Obama was on hand to host the event, which was titled “A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement.” The evening brought out many of music’s biggest names, including Joan Baez, Natalie Cole, Jennifer Hudson, John Mellencamp, Smokey Robinson, and last minute addition, Bob Dylan, who delivered a moving rendition of “The Times They Are A-Changin’”

“You don’t get much bigger than Bob Dylan, and who’d have thought that he would ever be playing at the White House,” Frank says. “So it was great to be a part of that. I think my favorite performance was actually Yolanda Adams doing “How Great Thou Art.” I hadn’t even heard of her before and she was absolutely incredible, her voice is just phenomenal and you could tell she was really into the whole experience.”

While you would never know it while watching the broadcast, Frank explained that getting the show on the air had some unique challenges. The MVI staff already knew they had their work cut out for them, with only 24 hours to edit the video and audio for broadcast, but a massive winter snowstorm gave them an unexpected obstacle as they worked through the night to turn a final edit around.

“After the concert, the on-site team (Music Mix Mobile) brought their audio truck over to the studio, and we had 50 mph winds – whiteout conditions – while we were going back and forth out to the truck,” he says. “It was just crazy, we had a huge generator in the parking lot to run the building in case we lost power because of the blizzard – and we actually ended up losing it for an hour and a half. Thankfully it came back, and we got around it, and everything worked out all right.”

The latest In Performance at the White House premiered on February 11, and saw coverage from a number of major music publications, including a news feature from Rolling Stone magazine. Now that he’s had a few days to recover from the 24-hour mixing marathon – and blizzard – Frank is obviously thrilled about thinking of his work being heard on PBS stations across the country.

“I watched it with my wife that night, and it was pretty exciting knowing that so many other people were watching it,” he says. “I think probably the thing I’m most proud of is that we all put our heads together and knocked this thing out in the middle of a blizzard. We made air time and the clients were happy, and that was really the most important thing about it. I think it turned out great, I was very happy with it.”