Welcome to Steelgrass, Kauai's multidisciplinary educational center for agriculture, music and the arts. On the agriculture side, we're a demonstration farm working to developing agricultural industries on Kauai for cacao (the chocolate tree), vanilla, bamboo and other sustainable crops. We provide nursery plants, training in horticulture and processing, and educational farm tours for residents and visitors.
On the music side, we are home to Kauai's only state-of-the-art recording studio, specially equipped for voice-over and ADR. In addition to top-quality professional digital recording equipment, the studio features acoustically ideal voice-over isolation rooms, as well as the microphones that recording professionals prefer, including the Neumann U-87. We provide direct-to-the-timeline connections between digital audio systems anywhere in the world, allowing ISDN-equivalent, real-time, broadcast-quality audio. Recent V/O clients include Ben Stiller and Jack Black for Dreamworks, as well as mainland and international production companies working on commercials for Kenmore, K-Mart, Mattel, Land Rover and many others.
Recent musical clients include world music performers from everywhere -- Africa, the Philippines, Scotland, Indonesia and India, plus singer-songwriters, jazz, roots Reggae, rock-'n-roll, The Dixie Hummingbirds, and the new-music quartet Ethel, not to mention Hawaii ukulele maestro Jake Shimabukuro. We invite musicians to bring your recording project to Steelgrass: nestled in the lush Kauai hills, our recording studio provides a professional facility in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Twice yearly Steelgrass Farm hosts the Berklee/Steelgrass Residency, in which faculty and student groups from Berklee College of Music in Boston come to Steelgrass Farm to use the recording studio, perform for the public, offer Master Classes, and share top-quality musical talent with students in local schools.
On the arts side, the Steelgrass Bamboo Sculpture Residency invites artists to submit proposals for outdoor bamboo sculpture. Those selected spend two weeks living on the farm, and using our extensive groves of timber bamboo as the raw material for constructing site-specific outdoor bamboo sculptures.
In support of our work to establish a home-grown chocolate industry on Kauai, The Steelgrass Institute sponsors ongoing scientific research on the insect predators and pollinators of theobroma cacao, the chocolate tree. Steelgrass Institute scholars are also engaged in scientific work on the neural substrate of consciousness, and the ways in which brain chemistry influences the form and content of our dreams, topics which are the subject of a series of conferences beginning in 2012.
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