Joe Baldridge, professor of entertainment and music business, has several recent accomplishments to boast including the following:

• Baldridge was honored in his hometown of Centralia, Illinois as a Distinguished Alumni, an award intended to inspire high school students to pursue their dreams. Mayor Tom Ashby, Principal Reid Shipley and community leaders look to build hope in local students by inviting high school alumni to encourage and inspire development and growth. His plaque will hang on the wall of the high school, and the city has declared Nov. 4 “Joe Baldridge Day.”
• Baldridge recorded Thomas Rhett’s recent album, “Life Changes,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Album chart upon its release and sold over 120,000 units in its first week. The album has also been nominated for the 2018 Grammy Awards as Country Album of the Year.
• Baldridge also recorded Kane Brown’s new single, “What Ifs.” The single topped the three main Billboard’s country songs charts – the Country Airplay, Country Streaming and Host Country Songs listing. The similarly titled album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart.
• Another recent recording of Baldridge’s was Keith Urban’s single, “Female,” performed at the CMA Awards last month.
• Lastly, Baldridge recorded Keith Urban’s recent single, “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” and most of the album, “Ripcord.” Urban won three American Music Awards for the productions.

Joe Baldridge is a successful music professional with over 25 years experience in music production, recording, mixing, artist management and brand/artist development with more than 300 album credits on AllMusic.com in the United States. He has won multiple Grammy Awards for engineering, received a nomination for 2014 Record of the Year for work on Taylor Swift’s RED and won a Dove award for production work for Toby Mac.

Assistant Professor of Audio Engineering Technology Nathan Adam has spent the semester involved in many endeavors outside of the classroom. On November 13, Adam presented at TED Talk at the TEDx Nashville Society of Fellows. His presentation, “Virtual Reality and the Democratization of Experience,” was presented as an avatar from inside virtual reality. The entire event was themed around discussions of how virtual and augmented reality are going to be one of the most disruptive and transformative technologies of the next 10 years and beyond.

Additionally, Adam also coordinated with hit audio software manufacturer Ableton to host a convocation on campus for 50 Belmont students from the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. Featuring a presentation and live Q & A, Serafin Sanchez from Ableton demo-ed production workflows and music making techniques in Ableton Live.

In partnership with Best Buy Teen Tech Centers, the Boys and Girls Club and the GRAMMY Museum Foundation,  Adam coordinated and taught audio engineering for the GRAMMY Camp Weekends in San Antonio, San Diego and Los Angeles. The camps hosted a combined 80+ high school students from the area working in three tracks including audio engineering & electronic music production, video production and songwriting, with instruction from video producers Hadaya Turner and performing artist Laura Donohue.

Finally, Adam had the opportunity to host discussion panels for the students alongside GRAMMY winning artists and producers. The camps ended with a 10 song performance featuring all original music and a video created by the students that day.