RIP Michael Berniker (July 25, 2008) Produced Barbra Streisand

Michael Berniker
June 30, 1935 – July 25, 2008

Multiple Grammy winning producer Michael Berniker has died, reports the New York Times.

From the Times: Michael Berniker, a prolific record producer whose diverse projects won nine Grammy Awards over four decades, died on Friday in Great Barrington, Mass. He was 73. The cause was complications from kidney disease, said his wife, Heather. Best known for producing the first three Barbra Streisand albums on Columbia as well as numerous Broadway cast albums, Mr. Berniker also produced Latin jazz, spoken word, comedy and classical records. Other pop artists he produced included Eydie Gorme, Johnny Mathis and Perry Como. Ben Webster, Charlie Rouse and Paquito D’Rivera were among the jazz musicians he produced. “Irakere,” his recording of the Cuban fusion band of the same name (produced with Bert DeCoteaux), won a 1979 Grammy for best Latin recording.  His Broadway show albums included original-cast recordings of five musicals — “Barnum,” “City of Angels,” a revival of “Sweet Charity,” “The Will Rogers Follies” and “The Life” — all with music by Cy Coleman. “The Will Rogers Follies” won a 1991 Grammy for best musical show album. Other cast albums included “My One and Only” and “Side Show.” Born in Brooklyn on June 30, 1935, Mr. Berniker studied music and philosophy at Columbia, then served in the Army for two years at Fort Bliss, in El Paso, where he had a local radio program and organized a jazz festival. In 1960, he enrolled in an in-house A&R (artists and repertory) training program at CBS Records. One of his first projects was a jazz series on Epic. Mr. Berniker had a special creative empathy with pop divas. The songs on the Streisand albums, the first of which won a Grammy for album of the year in 1963, were impeccably chosen to illustrate the breadth of her talent, and their arrangements, by Peter Matz, demonstrated an artistic rapport between singer and arranger comparable to that of Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle. These albums stand among the most expressively uninhibited of Ms. Streisand’s career. A similar dramatic electricity infused his recordings with Ms. Gorme, whose version of “If He Walked Into My Life” from “Mame” won a 1966 Grammy for best female vocal performance.  After leaving CBS in 1968, Mr. Berniker worked as an executive with several major record companies, including RCA, where he signed Daryl Hall and John Oates, Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band and Juice Newton. Returning to CBS in 1977, he originated the Columbia Jazz Masterpieces series. During a brief stint at Angel Records he produced “American Dreamer,” a recording of Stephen Foster songs sung by Thomas Hampson. Besides his wife, Mr. Berniker is survived by a son, Mark, of New York; a daughter, Judy Powell of Boulder, Colo.; and two grandchildren. – Stephen Holden

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