Candidate Bios

Luke Pacholski 

Luke Pacholski holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin. He is a software developer and systems administrator, and has had an interest in audio from an early age, when he would hook up multiple cassette recorders together to the bewilderment of his parents. In 1998 he started doing digital audio remastering/restoration, and in 2005 began making live recordings.

Luke’s ever-growing microphone collection is used, among other things, to produce and record house concerts; he has hosted over forty since 2012 and has done live sound and recording for many others.

He has consulted with various reissue producers and some of his restoration and mastering work has been featured on commercial releases.

Another passion is recording studio history, perhaps most notably that of Columbia’s 30th Street Studio in New York City. While unfortunately unable to have visited the studio in its lifetime, he hopes his research (along with that of AES PNW members Dan Mortensen and Gary Louie) has helped others gain some insight into the famed studio.

Luke hails from the upper Midwest and currently resides in Mundelein, IL.

Rod Evenson 

Roderick Evenson, Life Member Audio Engineering Society received his BS Engineering and Applied Science degree from Portland State University in 1975. In 1982, he received the MSEE degree from Washington State University. He had a teaching fellowship at Portland State University from 1975 to 1977. Since 1982, he is a Registered Professional Engineer (electrical engineering) in the state of Oregon.

He holds an FCC General Radiotelephone License with Ship Radar endorsement (formerly a First Class Radiotelephone License).

He has worked for Tektronix and Rockwell Hanford Operations. Rod has been a consultant since 1982.

Since 1967, he has done contract Recording work for local orchestras and musical ensembles. He is currently working with audio technology involving AES42 Type 2 and Ravenna IP for audio over ethernet/internet protocol networks.

Rod is a Life member of IEEE, SMPTE, and AES, with memberships in NSPE and SBE. Rod lives in Portland Oregon.

Michael Ashton

Michael Ashton is an electrical engineer, programmer, and sometime amateur musician. He started his engineering career in semiconductors at Burr-Brown, then spent twelve years in musical instruments, including a stint at Moog Music, where he was architect of the Moog One, and designed the oscillators. More recently, he has been working for Meta Platforms and running Ashton Research.

Michael has been an AES member since the Burr-Brown days, but only really started to get involved back when he was living in Los Angeles, which had a very active section. He believes the AES is a vital part of the audio industry, and is excited to get more involved and help advance the Society and its activities.

Pete Weise 

Pete Weise received both his B.M. in Jazz Performance in 1997 and his M.M. in Jazz Performance in 2005 from the University of North Texas. In December of 2024, Mr. Weise was awarded an A.A.S in Commercial Music from Collin College where he is currently Associate Professor of Jazz Guitar at Collin College and Professor of Music at Dallas College. Mr. Weise was a faculty member of the renowned National Guitar Workshop from 2000 to 2012, and is published by Premier Guitar Magazine. His performance credits include the Texas Tenors, Wayne Burgeron, Tom “Bones” Malone, Clay Jenkins, Jon Faddis, Bob Reynolds, James Morrison, Greg Bissonette, Adam Larson, Chad Lefkowitz- Brown, Sean Jones, Tom Hurst, Christine Jensen, Terrell Stafford, Lalo Davila, Stockton Helbing, Stuart Mack, Chester Thompson, Annie Booth, and Stefon Harris. He regularly performs with artists and commercial bands in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and is endorsed by Godin Guitars, G&L Guitars, D’Angelico Guitars, D’Addario Strings, and Supro Amplifiers.

As a solo artist, he performs regularly with his trio and quartet, playing original jazz compositions and free improvisation influenced by Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Scofield and Kurt Rosenwinkel. “Masch Branch” was independently recorded and produced in 2002, featuring saxophonist Chad Makela from Doc Severinson’s orchestra. Weise’s latest quartet album “Salome’s Blues” was released in 2012 by Armored Records, featuring saxophonist Mario Cruz (Jaco Pastorius Big Band, Bruce Springsteen) and bassist Jacob Smith (Bob Belden’s Animation band). He performs in many side projects, including a quintet comprised of guitar, keyboard, bass and two drummers. The band recorded and released “Love The Music” in 2011 and is a collaborative effort in free improvisation, electronica and jazz.

James D. jj Johnston 

jj received the BSEE and MSEE degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA in 1975 and 1976 respectively.

– Worked 26 years for AT&T Bell Labs and its successor AT&T Labs Research.

– One of the first investigators in the field of perceptual audio coding.

– One of the inventors and standardizers of MPEG 1/2 audio Layer 3 and MPEG-2 AAC, as well as the AT&T Labs-Research PXFM (perceptual transform coding) and PAC (perceptual audio coding) and the ASPEC algorithm that provided the best audio quality in the MPEG-1 audio tests.

– Currently working in the area of auditory perception of soundfields, electronic soundfield correction, ways to capture soundfield cues and represent them, and ways to expand the limited sense of realism available in standard audio playback for both captured and synthetic performances.

– Mr. Johnston is an IEEE Fellow, an AES Fellow, a NJ Inventor of the Year, an AT&T Technical Medalist and Standards Awardee, and a co-recipient of the IEEE Donald Fink Paper Award.

– In 2006, he received the James L. Flanagan Signal Processing Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society

– He presented the 2012 Heyser Lecture at the AES 133rd Convention: Audio, Radio, Acoustics and Signal Processing: the Way Forward.