A graduate of the Stevens Institute of Technology, John Newton was a staff technician for Dolby Labs and Vanguard Records before founding Soundmirror in 1972. He headed the engineering department of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood for fifteen seasons and was in charge of east coast operations of Soundstream, the pioneering digital recording company. A long professional relationship with Philips led to his serving as head of their recording department and helping develop the SACD format. He has consulted with numerous equipment manufacturers including Bricasti, Lexicon, and Studer. John is a frequent Grammy nominee and has won the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Classical for 2008, 2011, 2012, and 2025.

President and General Manager Alexis Price joined Soundmirror in 2008. Alexis graduated magna cum laude from Berklee College of Music with a degree in Music Business/Management. She studied violin and voice while at Berklee and was the student manager for The Wayfaring Strangers featuring Matt Glaser, Tracy Bonham, and Aoife O’Donovan among others. Following Berklee, Alexis worked in New York City as an artist manager for Medeski Martin & Wood, The Wood Brothers, and Marc Ribot. Working on the road with these fantastic artists helped Alexis transition to the location recording work of Soundmirror. Alexis oversees business operations and works together with the team to ensure all projects are produced to Soundmirror’s high artistic and technical standards.

A graduate of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, with a degree in Performance and Sound Recording Technology, Mark has been with Soundmirror since 1992, working his way through virtually every engineering seat at the company, including location engineer, editor, balance engineer, and mastering engineer. Mark specializes in large-scale on-site recordings and has worked with countless national and international orchestras and opera companies including the National Symphony (Washington, DC), Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra (St. Petersburg, Russia), New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and many others.

Mark also consults with equipment and software manufacturers on product development including Ivory, Lexicon, Kurzweil, Steinberg, and Cambridge Signal Technologies. Additionally, he designs and manufactures products for Lexicon, custom recording and studio equipment for Soundmirror, and rebuilds Studer and Ampex analog tape machines.

Mark has won 16 Grammy Awards, including five Awards for Best Engineered Album, Classical.

A member of the Soundmirror team since 1999, Blanton Alspaugh is our Senior Producer, overseeing recording projects ranging in size from the largest operatic and symphonic productions to solo piano. Each project gets a hand-picked team, and Blanton cultivates an atmosphere of open collaboration with a foundation of thorough preparation. These recordings are typically among the most highly-regarded releases every year—from the acclaim of critics around the world to the peer recognition of the Grammy Awards. Blanton won the Grammy Award for Producer of Year, Classical in February 2013, February 2019, and again in January 2020. Blanton frequently advises artists and ensembles on matters of repertoire and media strategy. He received a B.S. in Music Education from Tennessee Technological University and an M.M. in Orchestral Conducting from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

Equally at home in the engineer or producer chair, Dirk Sobotka joined Soundmirror in 2004. After having received his Diplom-Tonmeister degree from the Hochschule für Musik, Detmold in 1996, Dirk was a staff engineer for 8 years at SoundByte Productions in New York City. Dirk has worked as a recording and mixing engineer, editor and producer in a multitude of projects ranging from commercial recording, remastering, broadcast and audio for video. Through contributing his musical and technical expertise Dirk enjoys supporting artists and helping them to achieve their recording goals. Among his most noted projects is the ongoing recording series with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck on the Reference Recordings label. His work has earned numerous honors at the Grammys, including nominations for Producer of the Year, Classical in 2018, 2019, 2025 and an award for Best Engineered Album, Classical in 2010.

Anastasia started her journey in classical music in Moscow Conservatory with the BA in performance (viola) and later pursued her Master degree as a recording engineer and producer from Russian Music Academy in Moscow. She gained her expertise working at the Moscow Conservatory and All-Russian TV Company “Kultura” providing live recording and mixing for the broadcast as well as editing and mastering for commercial release and archive. She worked with labels such as Melodiya, Fancy Music, Moscow Conservatory Record Label, Honens, Naxos, Quintone, Master Performers, Piano Classics, Orange Mountain Music and others. Among places where she further developed and shaped her visions as an audio professional were Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich, where she had an internship, the Banff Centre for Creativity in Canada, where she studied and worked as a classical producer and Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, where she worked with renowned soloists, chamber ensembles and orchestras. Anastasia is a laureate of all-Russian Audio Engineering Competition, AES Student Recording Competition in New York and Pure Sound Recording Award. Apart from music, she enjoys yoga, psychology, as well as exploring the world with her kids and hunting for rare books for her countless collections.