IAR alum Errol Everton Ross, who now resides in Miami, FL, recently contacted us to let us know what he’s been up to since graduating!

Errol grew up in Jamaica and came to NYC to attend IAR. He was one of the first recording engineers in Jamaica to receive a formal audio education.

Since graduation, he has worked in Kingston, Jamaica as an audio engineer for Aquarius Recording and as a mastering engineer for Dynamics Sounds Recording Company. Some of his engineering credits include Soul Reggae by Beres Hammond and Badness No Pay by Leroy Smart, which was Jamaica’s first-ever 45RPM record that spun at 33RPM so that two songs could fit on one side.

“I also had the pleasure of starting Steven Stanley’s career. I asked my studio to hire a kid who I could train as a tape-op. Steven was hired right out of high school. I gave him a roll of blank 24-track tape to practice on and he used it to collect recordings of individual lines of various instruments from musicians when they were on break. He basically honed the music he collected this way into the hit that keeps on coming back, “Genius of Love.” At least a half a dozen artists have versions of this. Most notably, Jekell and Hyde brought it to the top of the U.S. R&B charts a second time, and amazingly, after more than 20 years or so, Mariah Carey did her rendition on her Daydream album.

“It was a pleasure working with these guys. I have also worked with Inner Circle. We used to laugh at them back in 1976 when they said that they were going international one day and, 20 years later, not only was their “Bad Boys” single in your living room every night as the theme to the show COPS, but they also scored the most coveted #1 position on the U.S. charts with “Sweat.”

His closing thought: “I’ve always been proud to have attended IAR!”