Recording engineer Michael Perez-Cisneros has died.

The jazz recording community lost one of its most trusted ears on June 19, with the sudden and unexpected death of Michael Perez-Cisneros, a Grammy-winning recording, mixing, and mastering engineer based in Brooklyn, New York, and sometimes recording in Nashville, TN. He was described by those who worked with him as not merely a technician but a true creative partner, someone who understood the music as deeply as the musicians making it.

Born and raised in New York with roots in Brooklyn, Perez-Cisneros came to recording through his Uncle Max, a session musician who played on records for artists from Liza Minnelli to Lauryn Hill. The exposure to the studio sparked his fascination with how music was captured on tape. He studied at the University of Miami and Cornish College of the Arts before building a reputation in New York’s fiercely competitive studio world. His breakthrough came when he met guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel at 30th Street Guitars, eventually wiring and building Rosenwinkel’s home studio and engineering records that placed him at the center of New York’s jazz recording scene. He went on to record at the Village Vanguard and Big Orange Sheep Studios in Brooklyn, becoming a first-call engineer for musicians across jazz, classical, and beyond.

The Grammy came in 2024, when El Arte del Bolero, Vol. 2 by Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo won Best Latin Jazz Album, an album Perez-Cisneros both recorded and mixed. “That session was magic,” he said afterward.

For readers of The Syncopated Times, his name will be familiar from the Turtle Bay Records roster, recording albums for Tatiana Eva-Marie, Sweet Megg, Terry Waldo, Dan Levinson, Molly Ryan, Colin Hancock, Hannah Gill, Mike Davis, Ricky Alexander, Champian Fulton, Klas Lindqvist, and Katie Cavera among others, as well as independent releases for Kat Edmonson, Eyal Vilner Big Band, Gordon Webster, and dozens of artists outside our focus. His most recent credit was Champian Fulton’s House Party, released just weeks before his death. He was, as those who loved him said, “a dear guy” who brought the same care to every session, whatever the style or scale.