Studio

SIGMA SOUND Studios' chief engineer and former co-owner Joe Tarsia remembers Billy Joel's radio concert debut being quite the event. Tarsia had been behind the board for a bunch of the record label-sponsored, "WMMR @ Sigma" shows, a series he recalls as "the first of its kind in the nation" and "a great way to promote a new act. " The series also brought wider attention to Sigma, then noted primarily as home to the sophisti-soul Philadelphia International...

After 23 years of calming crying babies, settling itchy kids and cajoling nervous adults to smile in his Drexel Hill portrait studio, Rich Pruett has moved his operation to Springfield, where he continues to calm babies, settle kids and cajole adults. The setting may change, but the business remains the same. A photographer - no matter where he works - "has to be a psychologist," Pruett said. Since last month, Pruett, 48, has been practicing his way with people in a renovated Tudor stone house at State and Sproul Roads.

A photographer's plan to use a house on Kromer Avenue in Berwyn as his studio was opposed by several neighbors at a hearing this week before the Tredyffrin Township Zoning Hearing Board. The photographer, Paul Emma, who lives in Devon, was seeking a variance from the residential zoning of the vacant twin house in the 600 block of Kromer that he owns. The zoning board heard testimony on the case Monday. Because of an error in advertising the hearing, the board will reopen the case at its Jan. 22 meeting.

It's not that the art of glassblowing doesn't get any respect. It's just that it never hurts to remind people that even if it's a bowl or an ashtray, it's still art. This explains why Emily Kimelman Gilvey and her husband, Sean, had planned to turn their Hudson Beach Glass studio into a small gallery ever since it opened in October. They wanted to show paintings and photography as well as exhibit their own line of glassware and others. "We're a small, family business that's making something," said Gilvey, a photographer turned mystery writer.

The word studio conjures up images of large spaces, sophisticated lighting and ideal photographic conditions. But a studio is simply a place where a photographer can master light and background, while having some control over technique. The amount of space can vary, as long as there is enough for the photographer, the subject and the equipment. Good sunlight can be helpful but isn't essential. A studio can be permanent or temporary, but the key ingredient is creativity. Many of the spectacular shots appearing in magazines were created in plain and even shabby surroundings.

It all comes down to a pig. Seagram chief Edgar Bronfman Jr. is banking on Babe: Pig in the City, the sequel to the 1995 hit Babe, and three other fourth-quarter films to drag his Hollywood studio out of a long, painful slump. The year has been a disaster for Universal Pictures, the film division of liquor and entertainment giant Seagram. Thanks to flops ranging from BASEketball to Primary Colors, Universal has fallen behind every major Hollywood player but MGM, with a paltry 4.1 percent market share, according to box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations.

A week ago, the Woodland Avenue Medical Clinic celebrated the grand opening of "Studio 55," a special teen clinic at the medical center in Southwest Philadelphia. About 200 teen-agers showed up for a tour of the facilities, on Woodland Avenue near 55th Street, where they can learn about venereal disease and drug abuse or get free pregnancy tests and contraceptives. The clinic, through a prenatal program for pregnant students at nearby John Bartram High School, has established a link to other students at the school.

With the release of Troll, Terrorvision and Eliminators this year, Charles Band and his Empire Entertainment mini-studio have made up in quantity what his films demonstrably lack in quality. Band makes no apologies for living in the basement of the movie world with straightforward exploitation films that have global prospects. He is a director (Metalstorm, Parasite) who has turned into a very successful studio executive and who invites obvious comparison with Roger Corman. In the '60s, Corman made his name and a great deal of money by hiring new directing talent cheaply.

In terms of quality, one of the most successful of the theatrical ventures launched in Philadelphia in the last few years is the Walnut Street Theater Company's studio theater program. In its first two seasons, this second-stage experiment has given us four productions of exceptional character. Nasty Little Secrets, Lanie Robertson's imaginative treatment of the life and death of playwright Joe Orton, recently closed the second season to sellout audiences. The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's passionate protest about the AIDS crisis, sold out earlier this season and will resume its timely run on June 14 after two days of previews.

Robert C. Froehlich, 78, of Buckingham Township, who operated a photography studio for many years and was prominent in Masonic activities, died Wednesday of cancer-related problems at Warminster Hospital. Mr. Froehlich was a chemical operator for several years at Merck & Co.'s Merck Sharp & Dohme Division in West Point, then spent 13 years as a cameraman for WCAU-TV in the 1950s and early '60s. From 1958 until his 1994 retirement, he owned and operated a photography studio bearing his name in Doylestown Township.

The whole world is going Hollywood. But is this a good thing? Florida-based Digital Domain Media Group, the special-effects company that brought the "Transformers" movies and the Tupac Shakur hologram to life, is setting up a studio in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. The deal signed Monday between Digital Domain and Abu Dhabi's government-backed twofour54 deepens the Emirati capital's ties to Hollywood as it accelerates its efforts to become a media hub. Digital Domain plans to establish an animation, visual-effects and motion-capture studio and a media school in Abu Dhabi as part of the deal.

Grace Gonglewski, the tall, velvet-voiced actor Philadelphia theatergoers have been seeing on professional stages for two decades, was standing in front of a microphone the other day. At this moment, she was not being Hedda Gabler, or Shakespeare's shrewish Kate, or a crackhead or a lesbian schoolteacher or George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. A few hours later in rehearsal, she would become Claire, her current role in the 1812 Productions version of David Mamet's comedy Boston Marriage.

  Former American Bandstand dancer Tommy "Crazy Legs" Davis leaned in to examine the enlarged pictures on the walls in Studio B, looking for himself in the photos that captured the Philadelphia heyday of the rock-and-roll dance party hosted by Dick Clark. Back then, Davis was a thin, 129-pound teenager from Roxborough with curly blond hair. On Saturday, he was an older version of himself with less hair and a few more pounds but the same love for the TV show and Clark, who died Wednesday in Los Angeles at 82. "My biggest thrill was dancing with Patti Page," said Davis, 70, of Jenkintown, who was a regular on the show from 1955 to 1957.

For seven years, it was a hot spot of teenage American pop culture. From 1957 until 1964, Dick Clark hosted American Bandstand at the West Philadelphia studios of WFIL-TV, where thousands of teens dreamed of appearing on the hit show. But few actually got the chance to dance inside the nondescript building in the shadow of the Market-Frankford El at 46th and Market Streets. If you were one of those teens who yearned for your Bandstand moment, here's your chance.

In a small, soundproof room in Point Breeze, Knatosh Walker sings a lament about love gone wrong. " I say the right things but she take it the wrong way ," he croons over an R&B track. " I know I'm wrong, but ain't nothing scarier than to come home and see her lipstick on my mirror. " As Walker half-sings, half-talks over the prerecorded music, Tyler Pratt watches as engineer Ron Meersand fiddles with knobs on a digital-recording console to get Walker's sound just right.

It's hard to imagine that the graceful, understated jewelry that Anna Bario and Page Neal fabricate was once produced in a tiny, grimy studio at Ninth and Spring Garden. "When we see customers who knew us then, it's like seeing your family?…," says Bario. "?‘I was 25 and working in a dirty studio across from a pistol range, and somehow you believed in us.'?" Now, the duo craft their wares in a sunny Queen Village shop with gray-painted hardwood floors and a pressed-tin ceiling — more apropos of their personal and professional aesthetic.

The arts in South Philadelphia just got a mobile ambassador in the form of a sprightly hued van known as ColorWheels. The 2011 Ford Transit Utility van awash in vivid primary colors will soon snake its way through the narrow streets of Bella Vista and its surrounding neighborhoods, spreading a message that touts the joys of making art. "We imagine ColorWheels to be this kind of Swiss Army knife of the arts that rolls up to the corner, opens the...

Nearly a year after work started, lawyer-developer Jeff Rotwitt's Sun Center Studios, built in Chester Township with $50 million from banks, investors and taxpayer financing, is frantic with Haddad's Inc. movie setup trailers, Sony studio executives, L.A. and New York grips, model-makers, costumers, makeup artists, caterers and other movie-industry workers and paraphernalia supporting Philadelphia native Will Smith, wife and costar Jada Pinkett-Smith, director...

Above all else, Villanova's Jay Wright took one thing away from last week's 3-day experience working in Atlanta as a studio analyst for the NCAA Tournament coverage on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. "As much as I enjoyed it, I learned how much I love coaching," he said. "And they said that to me when I left. They said they thought I did a great job, but we hope we don't have to use you again [next year]. And I said, 'Well I hope I don't see you either.' " This was the first time Wright's Wildcats (13-18)