John Murray

Department Chair

John Murray has worked professionally in film and video sound postproduction for 24 years designing and mixing award-winning soundtracks for features, documentaries, shorts, and advertising commercials. Read John's Blog

Bernie Mack

Associate Chair

Bernie Mack has been working professionally as a Recording Engineer for the past 15 years, which started by his founding of SoundHouse Studio. Since 1996 he worked out of Star Trax Recording, a Chicago based recording studio, with very diverse clientele in the music, advertising and multimedia industries. Read Bernie's Blog

Miguel Kertsman

Faculty

Composer, musician, producer, audio engineer and music technology consultant Miguel Kertsman has worked on numerous recordings, Grammy nominated and award-winning projects. He writes, produces, and engineers music for the symphonic stage, TV, film, the media, and records. Original works released internationally by Sony, RCA Victor, and Universal Edition; and collaborations on audio, music technology, academic development, and acoustics projects. Visit Miguel's Website

Jeff Kliment

Faculty

Prior to joining Flashpoint Academy, Jeff Kliment was Academic Manager for the Department of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College Chicago. Mr. Kliment has contributed to a wide variety of projects including post-production for feature films as well as sound design, voice, and music production for television, radio, and interactive video games. He has also engineered dozens of albums for independent and major labels and mixed hundreds of live shows in venues across the country.

Tom Blakemore

Faculty

Tom Blakemore has been an active audio engineer for thirty years. His work has included corporate communications projects and national radio and television advertising campaigns, as well as a large number of theatrical release feature-length films and documentaries that include winners of Sundance Film Festival awards, the Director’s Guild of America’s Outstanding Directorial Award, and Academy Award nominees. He has edited and mixed for virtually all of the major broadcast and cable television outlets.  Tom joined Flashpoint Academy in January of 2009, teaching sound design for film and video.

James Teitelbaum

Faculty

James Teitelbaum has been recording music since 1984.  His studio work includes dozens of records recorded at Chicago Trax, Studio Chicago, Streeterville, CRC, Metropolis, and at his home studio. A digression into live sound has taken him all over the world with Ministry, Royal Crown Revue, Gary Sinise's Lt. Dan Band, Pigface, and 700 shows at Chicago's Park West Theater.  James has been sharing his knowledge in a classroom environment since 1997 and joined the Flashpoint team in January of 2008.

George Luif

Staff

George Luif  has worked professionally in the recording industry since 1980 as a recording engineer, studio owner/designer and technician.  He has worked on many gold and platinum record sessions and has also had a studio design featured on the cover of Recording Engineer and Producer Magazine.