Ted Carfrae

Ted Carfrae is an English audio engineer, mastering engineer, songwriter and multi-platinum-selling record producer. He was born in Lyneham, Wiltshire, England and is best known for his production work with Jane McDonald, David Cassidy and Engelbert Humperdinck.
Early Career
Ted Carfrae began his music career as an assistant engineer at CTS Studios, Wembley in 1978. As an engineer he worked on numerous projects including the scores for movies such as 10, S.O.B., Victor Victoria, and , and Wings Over America. He also worked with many other artists and bands of the day such as The Carpenters, Ella Fitzgerald, Barry Manilow, Cilla Black, Lulu, The Shadows and UB40 as well as music for TV variety shows such as The Two Ronnies, The Morcombe and Wise Show and The Russ Abbott Show.
In 1982, Carfrae left CTS Studios to freelance as a sound engineer and held down a variety of jobs at SVC Television and Molinare studios in London’s Soho where he worked on promotional videos for Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ and Wham’s ‘Careless Whisper', 'Everything She Wants' and 'Last Christmas'.
In 1985, Carfrae signed his first song publishing contract with Neon Music Ltd (owned by Bruce Welch of The Shadows).
In 1986, Carfrae moved to Los Angeles and signed to a production company owned by LA producer and re-mixer Taavi Mote. While in LA, Carfrae worked with jazz heavyweight Jeff Lorber.
Music Mastering & Audio Restoration
In 1992, Carfrae returned to the UK. He spotted a gap in the music market where he noticed that more and more people had home studios but not the service of putting their music onto the then new medium of Compact Disc. Until this time, CD’s were only released by major record companies but with the invention of the CD-R it enabled the same possibilities to the masses.
In March 1993, Carfrae with his partner, Paul Maddox launched TCM Music which specialised in audio mastering and audio restoration for the average musician at home. It also offered digital restoration services and mastering to the professional industry. TCM was notably one of the first companies to buy the brand new Studer D740 CD recorder (only three studios in the world had this machine at the time: Abbey Road Studios, Evergreen Studios in Los Angeles and TCM). When Studer were developing the next generation D741 recorder, they chose TCM to road test the machine due to the huge volume of work TCM was turning out.
In 1995, Carfrae's company scored a major contract with radio and music provider Music Choice Europe to restore and re-master the BBC Record library for their multi-station digital radio output. This restoration work took a little over four years.
In 2008, Carfrae launched his new On-Line Mastering facility TCM Mastering offering professional mastering to musicians world-wide.
Production Work
In 1999, Carfrae returned to making music full-time after he was asked by K-tel International to produce his first album for eighties soul singer Jaki Graham. He was then introduced to Jane McDonald, the star of the BBC reality show, ‘The Cruise’ and was asked to produced new backing tracks for her various television appearances. This led to producing Jane’s first ‘In Concert’ video for Video Collection International which to date has been certified double-platinum by the BPI having sold over 100,000 units.
In 2000, Carfrae was commissioned by Universal Records to produce Jane McDonald’s second album, ‘Inspiration’. The album proved a massive success on the UK Albums Chart as it peaked at #6 and earned Carfrae his first silver and gold record awards from the BPI for sales of over 100,000 units.
In 2001, Carfrae produced the comeback album for seventies icon David Cassidy entitled ‘Then and Now’ which consisted of re-recordings of his biggest hits along with brand new songs. The album was a huge worldwide hit and gave Carfrae his second consecutive Top 5 smash. The album was also certified platinum by the BPI for sales of over 300,000 units. Also that same year, Carfrae was approached to produce brand new songs for Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘I Wanna Wake Up With You’ album (these were later featured on the singer's ‘Greatest Love Songs’ compilation which peaked at #4 and was certified platinum by the BPI having sold over 400,000 units).
In 2003, EMI Records asked Carfrae to produce a new album with sixties icon Cilla Black. This project more than any other, proved that Carfrae had come full circle as his very first session ever as an assistant engineer was on a Cilla's album "Modern Priscilla". Entitled ‘Beginnings’, the new project consisted of newly recorded songs. Cliff Richard and members of the boy band ‘Blue’ came in to add backing vocals.

Other notable career highlights include: producing a duet with Petula Clark which used an existing and rare vocal by the late Dusty Springfield - the duet entitled ‘Corner Of The Sky’ notably featured on the Top 20 Universal compilation; Petula Clark ‘’; ‘Jazz At The Theatre’ for Bonnie Langford; two big selling Dutch albums for country music duo Grant and Forsyth (formely of Guys n' Dolls); recording a new version of ‘Frozen’ with opera star Katherine Jenkins for ITV tribute show Madonna Mania; producing the latest album ‘Trentquility’ for the legendary songwriter Jackie Trent.
Selected discography
Albums:
* Best of Jaki Graham, David Grant, Linx by Jaki Graham (1999)
* Inspiration by Jane McDonald (2000) [UK #6]
* Then & Now by David Cassidy (2001) [UK #5]
* Beginnings by Cilla Black (2003) [UK #68]
* Jazz at the Theatre by Bonnie Langford (2003)
* His Greatest Love Songs by Engelbert Humperdinck (2004) [UK #4]
* Madonna Mania by Various Artists (2005)
* Christmas album by Grant & Forysth (2008)
* Trentquility by Jackie Trent (2008)
DVDs:
* In Concert by Jane McDonald (1999)
* Under The Night Sky by Kiki Dee (2008)
List of acts that Ted Carfrae has engineered/produced
* Cilla Black
* Ella Fitzgerald
* The Carpenters
* Shirley Bassey
* UB40
* Julie Andrews
* Paul McCartney and Wings
* Queen
* Sheena Easton
* Bill Wyman
* Kiki Dee
* Jaki Graham
* Jane McDonald
* David Cassidy
* Hear’Say
* Cliff Richard
* Bonnie Langford
* Engelbert Humperdinck
* Katherine Jenkins
* Liberty X
* Heather Small
* Michael Ball
* Grant & Forsyth
* Bernie Nolan
* Will Mellor
* Jackie Trent

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