Darren Rahn

Rahn, who launched his career producing, engineering and mixing for local Denver area artists starting in the late 90s, began working with Tisdale after Rendezvous Music, an independent label co-owned by Dave Koz, showed interest in signing him. While the label couldn’t commit to adding Rahn to their roster, they were so impressed with his production that they offered to have helm a track for Tisdale, one of their top artists. In 2004, just as his own solo career was gaining steam, Rahn produced the bassist’s hit cover of “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”; it was in the pole position on the airplay charts for four weeks and stayed in the Top 10 for nearly eight months. His subsequent production work on Tisdale’s Way Up! project led him to earn one of his Grammy nominations; the others came from his contributions as a producer and/or mixer for three Dave Koz projects: Greatest Hits, Hello Tomorrow and Summer Horns.
Rahn’s dual paths as an artist and producer reached a unique pinnacle in 2008-2009, when his own single “Talk of the Town” hit #1 on the Billboard jazz chart (followed by the Top 5 track “What Cha Gonna Do For Me”) and he scored three consecutive #1 productions (14 weeks in all) on the Radio & Records smooth jazz chart, holding the top position with Koz, Eric Darius and Tim Bowman. During this time, Rahn held the top three chart positions for several weeks and had as many as four songs in the Top Ten at the same time. Over the years, as his detail-oriented sonic excellence led to more and more hit recordings, his resume has grown to include everyone from Toby Keith, Jonathan Butler and Najee to Bob James, Kirk Whalum, Jeffrey Osborne, Phil Perry, Jeff Lorber, Norman Brown, Jonathan Fritzen, Scott Allman, Julian Vaughn, Nate Harasim, Nick Colionne, Lebron, Dave Bradshaw, Jr., Patrick Lamb and Ryan Montano.
Growing up on a farm in in a small British Columbia mountain town and later in San Diego, Rahn’s formative musical experiences – and the foundation of his later passion for jazz and other genres – came from playing gospel music. In addition to performing at his home churches, he toured around with his parents’ singing group. Throughout his journey, he played everything from traditional hymns to mainstream Southern gospel tunes. After playing jazz in both junior high and high school, he studied music as an undergraduate at Adams State University, then earned his master’s and part of his Doctorate at the University of Northern Colorado in classical saxophone and jazz pedagogy. Settling in Denver, Rahn by 1997 was self employed as a free lance producer, writing his own material on the side as he worked towards his eventual emergence as a solo artist.
“Working on the new album, I’ve really been enjoying the variety of music that draws from all of these musical roots,” he says. “It was especially fun and effortless recording the gospel tune because that was such a huge part of my background. Because of the freedom I have to explore as an artist with Woodward Avenue Records, I also appreciate the opportunity to approach the compositions more from a melodic sense. I am building all of the songs around melodies I compose at the piano, as opposed to starting with big production ideas and working the tunes around those. I’m really excited about this special project and the start of this new phase of my solo career.”