I was poring over the loooong list of nominations to find something I was interested in. Took awhile, but:

Field 27 - Production, Non-Classical

Category 92 - Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

(An Engineer's Award. (Artists names appear in parentheses.))

• Beauty & Crime

Tchad Blake, Cameron Craig, Emery Dobyns & Jimmy Hogarth, engineers (Suzanne Vega)

[Blue Note]

• Destination Moon

Dave O'Donnell & Elliot Scheiner, engineers (Deborah Cox)

[Decca Records]

• Don't Mess With The Dragon

Robert Carranza, Serban Ghenea, John Hanes & KC Porter, engineers (Ozomatli)

[Concord Records]

• Floratone

Tucker Martine, engineer (Floratone)

[Blue Note]

• II

Jason Lehning, engineer (Viktor Krauss)

[Back Porch Records]

I would have preferred to see Suzanne get a performance or songwriting nod, but I am glad to see something. : )

Last year, Aimee Mann's "The Forgotten Arm" won a best packaging Grammy. It helped get the album some more notice. That's cool.  

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"The future has a brilliant future in it."

huntre:

Last year, Aimee Mann's "The Forgotten Arm" won a best packaging Grammy. It helped get the album some more notice. That's cool.  

 Well-deserved too. I loved the design of that album (as well as the music of course!)

This is the same award "Days of Open Hand" won in 1991, also well-deserved - the best album package of Suzanne's career in my opinion.

It appears to be the only Grammy win associated with her, which puzzles me to no end. Perhaps her music stylings are too ambiguous to be categorized by the academy, and therefore she has been left out all these years (obviously not including the nods for "Luka"). 

I love the irony of her most critically confounding work ("Days of Open Hand") being the sole Grammy winner of her oeuvre.

The Grammys are known for their sometimes-inexplicable decisions -- anyone remember who beat Elvis Costello for Best New Artist in 1978? (It was A Taste of Honey, known for their deathless classic "Boogie Oogie Oogie.") Bruce Springsteen fans are complaining about him being snubbed this year, despite all the critical applause for his new album.

Like all such awards, I think these ones tend to give a lot of weight to commercial success, hence the general neglect of Suzanne since "Luka." I agree that ambiguity probably has something to do with it. Except for knowing Suzanne as "the Luka chick," what easy pigeonhole do albums like Days of Open Hand, Nine Objects of Desire or Songs in Red and Gray fall into? ("I'll take 'Albums With Prepositions in the Title' for $500, Alex.")

Anyway, way to go Tchad! And I suppose Blue Note can at least slap a "Grammy Award Nominee" sticker on the album cover now.
 

"The Forgotten Arm" is one of my favorite albums right now.  Great taste!

Cool news.

"Beauty & Crime" won Best Engineering. Congrats to Tchad Blake, Cameron Craig, Emery Dobyn, Jimmy Hogarth, and of course Suzanne Vega, who started it all on GarageBand.

Great news indeed!! Congratulations to all concerned!!

wishing everyone a nice week. best, Zoli

Mix OnLine (pre-awards info) :

http://mixonline.com/grammys/best-engineered-album/

Suzanne Vega, Beauty & Crime

Engineers: Tchad Blake, Cameron Craig, Emery Dobyns and Jimmy Hogarth

Suzanne Vega, who had not a put out a studio album for six years when Beauty & Crime was released, is no stranger to innovative sonics. Though generally considered a folkish singer/songwriter on the basis of her early work, she’s never shied from experimentation in the studio. Indeed, she was married for a period to iconoclastic producer Mitchell Froom, and cut a pair of albums with Froom’s former partner-in-studio-eccentricity, engineer Tchad Blake. Though the Froom/Vega union did not last, the association with Blake has, and he is credited as the mixer on this eclectic album filled with meditations on Vega’s home city of New York and on some of her idols and influences. Blake, who now lives in England, has had a long and fascinating career, working with everyone from Los Lobos (multiple albums) to Elvis Costello and from Sheryl Crow to Pearl Jam. Jimmy Hogarth produced Beauty & Crime, and also helped engineer (and played guitar). He’s worked with a host of interesting folks in recent years, including Amy Winehouse, Sia, James Blunt, Corinne Bailey Rae and James Morrison. Cameron Craig’s engineering credits includes acts such as Sasha, Sia, UNKLE and The Hours. And Emery Dobyns has engineered for Patti Smith, Battles, Travis and Edison Woods, among others.

Congratulations to Suzanne, Tchad and all the rest! It's well deserved.

Did they hand out this award during the broadcast last night, or was it one of those prizes that gets announced earlier in the day?
 

Oddly enough, Barack Obama won a Grammy yesterday too (for "Best Spoken Word Album"). I have no idea if this is an omen or anything, but can you say "running mate"?

 Here's the whole list:

 

http://www.grammy.org/Grammy_Awards/50th_show/list.aspx#92
 

Congrats to all those who contributed to a nod for "Beauty and Crime"--it totally deserves the attention!

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Congratulations! Indeed well deserved!!! The songs all sound so good and tight and warm - and the sound is so appropriate to the theme of the album.

It is especially very nice to see some spotlight on the album again. Hopefully it draws new attention to it in the public.

Great news!!! Congratulations!!

It's amazing just how many awards are given out these days; I, too, spent a long time going through the entire list.

A big congrats to Suzanne, Tchad and the rest of the engineers for this one - well deserved.