THE BAHAMIAN BEAUTY THAT GIVES BACK
STEPS AWAY FROM THE COAST of the Atlantic Ocean in New Providence, Bahamas, there’s a striking structure that very much resembles the waves surrounding it — a white edifice by starchitect Bjarke Ingels, set on the 600-acre grounds of a luxury resort community. It could well be the tropical hideout of a star like Drake, or Mariah Carey, or Sting.
But while all of those artists have inhabited it at some point, this isn’t any of their mansions away from home: It’s Sanctuary Studios, where they have all recorded. The 19 narrow windows on the facade let the Caribbean sunlight into a Finnish oak-paneled live room, designed with the help of acousticians from U.K.-based White Mark to achieve sound quality as pristine as the scenery outside.
“You have the overall designers, but they need the experts,” says Ann Mincieli, studio director of Sanctuary and an established engineer known best for her work with Alicia Keys. (She also owns New York’s Jungle City, a luxe destination studio itself.) “It’s quite the team, down to mechanical and HVAC engineers and plumbers — over 80 to 100 people, and we all work together.”
But for Mincieli and founder Charles Goldstuck (founder/co-chairman of HitCo Entertainment), building a destination studio in the Bahamas didn’t mean shutting it off from surrounding residents. “We felt this would be a great balance between a commercial opportunity but also giving back to the local community — to have a place where Bahamians could learn how to work within a recording studio environment,” Goldstuck says.
So they teamed up with the local Windsor School and the Bahamas Youth Foundation to create a scholarship program aimed at bringing “talented and gifted young people” into the school’s well-regarded music program, which includes trips to Sanctuary itself. The studio also houses a training program for local music teachers to further their own education. “If you’re building a studio in an area where there aren’t facilities, it’s down to going into the schools and hearing from the music teachers,” Goldstuck says. “What do you need? How can we help?”
Funding those programs is possible because Sanctuary is often booked solid by global stars for seven months of the year. Recently, DJ Khaled made two trips there while working on his chart-topping 13th album, God Did. The megaproducer is one of a few artists who fortuitously touched down at Sanctuary at the same time, spurring spontaneous collaborations. “Justin Bieber and Khaled, Justin Timberlake and Khaled, they definitely made songs together,” Mincieli says. “If [an artist] posts on social media in the Bahamas, [other artists] get excited. They know exactly where they’re at, and they’ll either call them or try to come down and be a part of it.”
Still, it’s hosting the stars of the future at Sanctuary that Goldstuck and Mincieli ultimately find most rewarding. “You can have the most impact when you reach younger students because they don’t have the resources and opportunities — at least in our world,” Goldstuck says. “We are as excited about what happens locally as we are about bringing in the top artists from around the world.”