SUNY Oswego students receive field recording experience with Buffalo GirlChoir at St. Mary's Church in Oswego. From left are Evalyn Whitcomb, Erika Zhunio, Tenille Cotton and Makayla Kriner.
SUNY Oswego audio recording and production students recently had the opportunity for meaningful and professional-level experience on campus and in the community recording an album for the visiting Buffalo GirlChoir.
The renowned choir previously worked professionally and regularly with Jenna Rutowski, who came to Oswego in fall 2025 as assistant professor of practice for audio recording and production in the Music Department.
“When I took my position at SUNY Oswego, their founder and director, Kathleen Bassett, reached out with a creative pivot: instead of me going to them, why not bring the choir to Oswego?” Rutowski recalled. “The idea was that the choir could serve as a live demonstration ensemble for our recording students. From there, it grew organically into a full collaborative weekend.”
Students from Rutowski's “Recording Technology” classes (MUS 383 and MUS 483) became the choir's engineering team for the entire weekend. “They weren't observers; they were the engineers on a live session with a professional-caliber ensemble,” Rutowski said.
This included real-time problem-solving and adaptation, as the choir recorded in very different acoustic environments on campus in Tyler Hall and in the spacious St. Mary’s Church in Oswego –- while managing the dynamic of working with a large group of younger performers.
“That's pretty much exactly what a working session engineer deals with,” Rutowski said. “The fact that the choir came here, to their campus, and trusted our students to capture their music is something that's hard to put a value on. It builds confidence, competence and professional identity all at once, and our students were up to the task!”
For students like Joshua Woodworth, it provided a valuable experience and opportunity to work with a large group and sometimes learn on the fly.
“I’ve never really worked with a group so impromptu like this,” Woodworth said. “It’s nice to record something that isn’t strictly for a project and has to do with the community.”
Like many other students in the program, Woodworth is a musician, and being on both sides of the audio board provides many insights.
“It gives me a lot of creative ideas on how I want to use space or connect parts to each other,” Woodworth said.
At SUNY Oswego, where ensembles are open to all majors, students with a musical background can get plenty of experience to match their interests, especially in the audio recording and production program.
“The door is always open to do whatever you want,” Woodworth said. “You always will have the ability to do the music and do the recording.”
Making connections
The most interested visitor might have been Bridget O’Neill, a senior at Buffalo’s City Honors School and an accepted student in SUNY Oswego’s software engineering program with an interest in musical theatre.
“My choir is recording an album because of how great the sound recording here is,” O’Neill said. “I’m also here for the Admitted Students Day.”
Buffalo GirlChoir, O’Neill said, is a rewarding and open community where auditions are not required while teaching children from kindergarten to seniors in high school about singing, musical theory and working together.
“The mindset here is anyone who wants to sing can learn to sing,” O’Neill said. “It’s a good community, and everyone’s so kind.”
O’Neill has even taken on a leadership role, volunteering to help with younger choirs. “It’s so fun to get to see them because they are all so interested in music and just so happy to be there,” O’Neill said. “It’s so cool just getting to watch them learn.”
The collaboration also served as a signature and spotlight event for SUNY Oswego’s audio program, which “is relatively rare in depth and scope within SUNY and among comparable four-year institutions in New York,” Rutowski said.
“We offer a continuous ladder of coursework, from foundational recording technology all the way through advanced production and mastering, so students aren't just dipping a toe in. They're building real, cumulative expertise over multiple years,” she added.
Woodworth agreed, noting the introductory courses set up for professional-level experiences in later semesters. The advanced recording classes are "when you get really deep into the mixing and the editing and all of the finer detail stuff that helps you make a recording sound professional,” Woodworth said.
Rutowski added that SUNY Oswego also connects knowledge in areas such as room acoustics, the perception of sound and signal processing to hands-on opportunities, as well as a robust professional network.
“Students here have access to mentors and collaborators who are working at the highest levels of the industry for masterclasses and internships, including Grammy- and Emmy-nominated recordings,” Rutowsky said. “That pipeline between the classroom and the profession is hard to find anywhere else, and I think students feel that when they're here.”
Successful experience
For the choir members and the Laker family, the weekend provided more than an opportunity to make a record –- it allowed participants to have fun and learn a lot from the process.
“What struck me most about this weekend was how it embodied exactly what I want our program to stand for: that our students are ready to do real work, with real artists, in real conditions,” Rutowski said. “The Buffalo GirlChoir is a serious ensemble. These are talented young singers performing at a genuinely high level, and they trusted us.”
In addition to the recording sessions, the choir had a joint rehearsal with the university’s State Singers and, working with Admissions and other offices, opportunities to learn more about the campus, Oswego’s opportunities and college life in general.
Rutowski also believes that, in addition to O’Neill, other members of the choir might consider SUNY Oswego, or even entering the field of recording like Woodward, after the rewarding experience.
“I also think there's something meaningful about a youth ensemble making the trip to a college campus and interacting with college-age students who are passionate about capturing music,” Rutowski said. “For those girls, it may have planted a seed about what a career in audio production or music could look like. That kind of ripple effect is exactly why these collaborations are important.”
Kathleen Bassett, founder and artistic director for Buffalo GirlChoir, leads the choir as SUNY Oswego audio students record a session in a soaring Tyler Hall music studio.
Kathleen Bassett, founder and artistic director of Buffalo GirlChoir, leads a collaborative session between the visiting choir and SUNY Oswego's State Singers in Tyler Hall.