Costa, Guy

Technical whiz who engineered a couple of early Diana Ross albums, the soundtrack of Lady Sings the Blues and the live album, An Evening with Diana Ross. He was billed as a special sound consultant on the soundtrack of another Ross project, The Wiz. In 1979, he was credited with arrangement, conducting and music preparation on Frank Sinatra's boxed set, Trilogy. A year later, he engineered Jose Feliciano's self-titled album. In 1981, he performed similar duties on Billy Preston's The Way I Am. Along with Ralph Sutton and Russ Terana, he worked on the music for the 1983 and 1984 Emmy awards ceremonies. In 1985, he did a cinematic turn as a technical advisor on Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon. Later in the decade, he served as president of The Society of Professional Audio Recording Services. In 1992, he mixed Lionel Richie's Back to Front, and engineered and produced The Jacksons: An American Dream. He spent the mid-'90s mastering Amy Arena's eponymous album, Nicholas Gunn's Afternoon in Sedona, Edwin Hawkins' All Things Are Possible: Live in Toledo, Tag Team's Audio Entertainment, and Johnny "Guitar" Watson's Bow Wow. In 2006, some material Guy had engineered for Diana Ross in 1972 was finally released: The album, entitled Blue, is a mix of jazz and blues covers that Ross had done around the time of Lady Sings the Blues. Guy has also worked at his uncle Don Costa's production company and has served as Vice President of Engineering in the Los Angeles division of Motown Records.

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