Last week I attended an event put on by the Recording Academy that spotlighted ESession, which is an Web-based company that facilitates the hiring of studio talent (musicians, mix engineers, producers) for remote sessions. The idea is to give clients a choice of “A-List” talent to hire for their home-recorded projects. Not only does ESession’s Web-based interface help you find and hire talent, it also facilitates the exchange and storage of your session files (through FTP), which is key in a remote-recording situation.

The event took place at the XM Radio studios in Manhattan,which are located in the beautiful new Jazz at Lincoln Center facility overlooking Central Park. ESession is a result of a partnership between recording engineer and singer/songwriter Gina Fant-Saez and renowned producer/engineer Kevin Killen. Killen has worked with such artists as U2, Elvis Costello, Peter Gabriel, Paula Cole, Amos Lee, Duncan Sheik, Shakira, and many more.

Other notables on hand at the event included producer/engineers Jimmy Douglass and Dave O’Donnell. The idea was to give the Academy members a look at ESession, which, among other things, hopes to help jump start the moribund session scene.

Fant-Saez and Killen both addressed the gathering, and demos of ESession were given every 15 minutes in one of the studios. I had a chance to talk to them at length about how ESession works. LISTEN to the interview. WATCH a video of Fant-Saez and Killen speaking at the event.