Christian Castagno

Christian Castagno grew up in a Gurdjieff School surrounded by esoteric music and sacred dances, Christian showed a natural affinity for “the invisible sound that moves all hearts” early on and at fourteen took up playing various acoustic instruments.Professionally he is an eleven-time nominated and three-time Grammy-winning music producer.From the time he was 20, he had returned to his native New York City to pursue music and production full-time, and it was there he was fortunate enough to work at the legendary Manny’s Music on 48th Street in Manhattan.In this same moment, he met Walter Sear who became his professional mentor and later very generously traded him a 16-track Ampex for a mic preamp so that he could start his own studio because, in the words of Mr. Sear, “How else could I get him to stop pestering me?"From 1997 to 2008 he and fellow producer Danny Blume operated GoodandEvil Studio in Brooklyn where they produced a wide variety of records ranging from pop, jazz, Latin, hip-hop, and electronic music.In 2003 Chris won his first Grammy for engineering with the return of seminal Louisiana favorite Eddie “the Chief” Clearwater.In 2007 Chris and Danny were nominated for Best Jazz Album with Sex Mob’s “Sexotica- a Tribute to Martin Denny” and won a Grammy for “Best World Music Album” with the Klezmatics.In 2008 Chris was again nominated twice for his work on Miguel Bosé’s "Papito" - producing and playing on five of the tracks, most notably Morena Mia with Julieta Vanegas, 2007’s most downloaded Latin song on iTunes.In 2010 Chris and his wife Tatiana chose adventure and moved with their son Apolo to the coast of Colombia to a little town hidden away in the jungle called Minca in order to study that natural wisdom present in the indegenous people in La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta where he is built his recording studio and event space Sonido Selva.Sonidoselva is cultural center focused on the transmission of knowledge in all its forms in the context of using these things to build a better community here in Minca.Most recently he was nominated for both North American and Latin Grammys for his work on Bomba Estereo’s “Hayo” as well as nominations for best global roots album by the Canadian Folk Music Awards for his production and mixing on The Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra’s 2020 album “Velkombak”.As a veteran of over two hundred records, his credits include work with artists such as Iggy Pop, Bomba Stereo, Arcade Fire, Kombilesa Mi, Los Gaiteros de Ovejas, Miguel Bose, Systema Solar, Ru Paul, Naty Botero, Felix da Housecat and many others.In addition to his album production activities, Chris has fostered a substantial music and arts community in Minca with concert events as well as expanding his unique approach to teaching a broad range of topics such as the math and physics of harmonic series, pitch and perception, acoustics as well as more esoteric musical systems such as the Indian system of Shruti and George Gurdjieff's system of octaves.As well, Christian has spent a great deal of time here in La Sierra studying the unique spritual and cosmological ideas of the Mamos of La Sierra who are the spiritual and indigenous leaders here guiding these processes.Christian is looking forward to the opportunity to pass on his experience and perspective in order to cultivate the next generation of young minds in the powerfully creative location of La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.