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An engineer, producer, mixer, remixer, composer, collaborator and constant world traveler who is comfortable working in any genre, from rock to electronica to world music, Carmen Rizzo is always on the move. But whether the two-time GRAMMY® nominee is recording the Who’s Pete Townsend on a river barge in London, performing onstage with his band Niyaz in New Delhi, or working on a Coldplay remix in his high-tech studio overlooking the famed intersection of Hollywood and Vine, the one constant in Rizzo’s life is his Intel-equipped computer.

“My Intel Macintosh has been all over the world doing shows, from Montreal Jazz Festival to Turkey, France and Spain, as well as recording, and it has never failed me once,” reports Rizzo. “I have a show planned in September at the Hollywood Bowl with Paul Oakenfold and Underworld and I will be there representing with my Intel Mac!”

In fact, Rizzo packs a pair of laptops when he hits the road: “I have a black one for audio use, running Abelton Live 6 and M-Audio’s M-Powered Pro Tools, and a white one that I use for my office stuff and visuals when I perform. I use a program called Motion Dive.Tokyo from Edirol/Roland for video, and with the Intel engine it kicks butt!”

Whether he’s in a studio, a musician friend’s apartment or on the road in a hotel, his creative process usually starts with the computer, says Rizzo, who has worked with such artists as Alanis Morissette, Seal, BT, Tiesto, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cirque du Soleil, Grant Lee Phillips and Paul Oakenfold over the years. “Software is always involved--either Pro Tools or Abelton Live. I either play around on a keyboard, finding a riff, or messing with sound design, which always inspires rhythm, which for me is always the first part of an idea. Creating my own loops and programming really inspires me a lot.”

The upgrade to Intel power has really helped that creative process along, he says. “I had just scored my first film, a Michael Apted movie called ‘The Power of the Game,’ distributed by Pathé. Between the video, real-time instruments and audio I was running, I said a prayer every time I hit play. So I upgraded from a ghetto G5 single 1.8 GHz, non-Intel to a Xeon 64-bit quad-core 3-gig.”

Rizzo enthuses, “It was like going from a bicycle to an automobile. The big difference is power. With the new computer Intel has made it so easy for me to work, especially with audio and video. I use the Universal Audio cards, so Intel now allows me to free the strain on Pro Tools and use the muscle of the computer. With having this much power it make me not want to use as much TDM on my Pro Tools|HD rig. I get so much power from using RTAS, thanks to Intel. I’m very happy now.”

Rizzo recently worked on a project with Dave Stewart on a song, “Go Green,” that the former Eurythmics main man wrote for Greenpeace. Following in the footsteps of “We are the World,” the song is tied in with a worldwide campaign to promote environmental and green issues and features guest artists such as Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, Imogen Heap, Natalie Imbruglia and many others. “I did this really cool electronic world beat version,” Rizzo shares. “My Intel Mac was in full effect. It started on my new Xeon 64-bit dual-core, which requires a seatbelt when you use it--it’s so fast!”

The new computer has already been road tested: “I had to travel to Las Vegas and record my friend Toumany Kouyaté, who is from Senegal and performs in the Cirque du Soleil. We recorded in my hotel room with my Intel Mac and M-Audio 410 Firewire audio interface and it was flawless.”

Whatever the project, Rizzo doesn’t bow to commercial pressures. “I really make music to please myself and never chase the charts. I want to make records I would buy, and rarely do I find myself listening to what is on the chart. My motto has always been people should judge you by the music you make, not from chart success or your bank account. No one knows how much you get paid, they just like what they hear.”

Photo File: Carmen_Rizzo.JPG

 

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Contact:
Dan Snyder
PR Manager, Intel Corporation
daniel.s.snyder@intel.com
(408) 765-6398