Tony Succar

Now president of his own entertainment company, Mixtura Productions, Tony Succar knows his way around a number of job descriptions: bandleader, percussionist, musician, producer, composer, and arranger.

He got started with music at the very young age of four. With his mother a singer and his father a pianist, he played numerous gigs with his parents all the way through childhood, in the process becoming an extremely good drummer. Later on, he studied jazz performance at Florida State University’s School of Music, from which he graduated with a master’s degree.

Tony Succar eventually assembled a group of artists plus an exceptional production team to create The UNITY Project, a collaborative Latin tribute to Michael Jackson that interweaves elements of American pop, jazz, tropical, and world music upon the King of Pop’s enduring musical foundation.

[LEWITT] How did you come up with the idea for the UNITY Project?

During my time at FSU, I formed a group called Mixtura Band. We played a lot of gigs at various clubs, and we still do that today. Mixtura gave me a chance to start using my abilities to arrange, produce, and orchestrate, and I learned how to compose music in Latin jazz and Latin fusion styles. Then, in October of 2009, I happened to get a call from an agent named Randy Singer. He was planning a Halloween party for a local club in Miami, Florida, and he wanted to me to perform Thriller that evening. I came up with the idea of doing a Latin jazz fusion version of the song that we could perform live. And when I saw how people went crazy over it, that inspired me to make an entire record as a tribute to Michael Jackson. I was able to work with great artists – Latin superstars like Tito Nieves, Jon Secada, La India, and Obie Bermúdez. We also got Michael Jackson’s legendary engineer Bruce Swedien to come work on the album. The whole thing ended up being a five-year project, and we recorded with 100 musicians. After it was finished, Universal heard it, and they signed it. That was a real transition in my career.

[LEWITT] When was the first time you used LEWITT microphones?

It was when I had the opportunity to shoot a PBS special for the UNITY project. The special was part of the PBS Fall Arts Festival, hosted by Gloria Estefan, and we did a live performance with 37 musicians on stage. It was four days of production all told, and we multi-tracked it over 84 channels. That was the first time I experienced LEWITT microphones; we used them on strings and on a couple of the percussion instruments, and it was sort of like a test. We were all kind of skeptical at first, because it’s a new brand and my engineer was like: this is a one-time opportunity, it’s got to come out great or not at all. I told him: let’s give it a try, they look great and they’ve been recommended highly to us. So we used the mics and did the sound check with them, and we really loved what we heard! The mics just sounded great and gave us an incredible transparency – the real instrument sound was coming out just really clear, which is what I’d always been trying to obtain.

[LEWITT] Tell us about your favorite LEWITT microphones….

One of my favorite mics that I’m using in the studio is the LCT 840. It’s incredibly warm-sounding, and I really enjoy what it translates in terms of the vocal performance. I also use it on acoustic guitars, and I like its clarity, it’s very transparent, and it cuts right through the mix! It sounds very full and is really well balanced. And the 5 switchable polar patterns are very helpful in finding a sweet spot.