About TortoiseClimbing

Our Roots


Quick Synopsis

Our roots go back many decades, with singing being both the foundation and catalyst that in 1993 led to creation of TortoiseClimbing™. Experiences and knowledge gained over the years led to further evolutions of our mission and structurewhich is to produce carefully crafted, high-quality, nostalgic songs, companion eBook histories, podcasts and audiobooks of the eBooks for public release.

Depending on your philosophy of how, or why things happen, you might think of the creation and evolution of TortoiseClimbing™ as:

You be the judge.

Some Historical Background

David began singing publically in elementary school choruses. 

Remember when public schools included music education in elementary, then junior high, (now reorganized as middle schools) and high schools?

David had the opportunity in then Junior High, to sing a solo hymn in the school's Amateur show. (That hymn is included on the album: Hymns and Songs of My Mother.)

Then as a senior in high school, he was selected to sing several small solos for the part of Jesus in the 1959 choral production by the Annapolis High School choirs of John Stainer's The Crucifixion. A private, monophonic, LP record was produced from the amateur, consumer quality tapes of those live performances.

The restored and mastered version from that LP recording now available as a digital download, free, from TortoiseClimbing Audio™. This is possible because the score for The Crucifixion became Public Domain the beginning of 2023. TortoiseClimbing Audio™ converted the LP to digital, restored and mastered the historic, nostalgic, amateur recording, which wonderfully captures what high school choral performances were and are!


(Version 1 of the digital file is provided from this website, and the further enhanced version 2 from TortoiseClimbing™'s online audio Marketplace. Individually burned CDs are temporarily delayed, but will become available at cost, $3.00.) For details see AHS Recording of The Crucifixion.


Following high school, David's love of singing led him to undertake vocal training. That was done as a minor within his college studies and privately afterward. He sang in choruses through college, and solos and choruses afterward. 

The college choir he sang with provided wonderful experiences performing at:


The incredible experiences with David's college choir occurred because Professor Fague Springmann (stage name Lee Fairfax), facilitated those wonderful choral experiences being possible. They occurred because Professor Springmann had a magnificant, operatic, bass-baritone voice, sought after as a solo artist for performances of very well-known classical compositions. Many of those also needed a chorus. Mr. Springmann successfully suggested his chorus be used as the supporting chorus for some such productions.

Mr. Springmann was born August 22, 1917, and died December 25, 1983. He is buried in Cranford United Methodist Church Cemetery in Lorton, Virginia, USA. (Fague Springmann).

He was a graduate of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. Also studied at the Julliard School of Music in New York City and at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. In 1952, using the stage name of Lee Fairfax, he rented Carnegie Hall and presented his debut recital to rave notices. (See Fague Springmann).

In addition to his duties as Associate Professor of Music at the University of Maryland, College Park, Professor Springmann recorded a number of LPs at the Washington, DC Edgewood Recording Studio before and during David's college years. That led to a formative experience in the mid-1960's when Mr. Springmann invited David to accompany him to an editing session of his current recording at Edgewood Recording Studio.

That was before programmable multitrack master tapes became common in the late 1960's, and editing meant using a razor blade to cut the tape, remove the unwanted recording take, and splice in the desired revised recording take. Today with digital recordings, that function is performed electronically with software, commonly referred to as a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).


-- End of Window Role of Fague Springmann's Magnificent Voice in These Experiences --


The backstory of why Edgewood Recording Studio even existed in Washington, DC for Professor Springmann to take David to an editing session there, illustrates the serendipitous nature of life.


Mr. Ed Greene (some bios say David) was a co-founder of Edgewood. The genesis for that was that Ed was drafted in 1956 and served as a recording engineer for the U.S. Army Band and Chorus in Washington, D.C. (That likely means he had already learned what was then a rare skill as a recording engineer before being drafted.) Then for some years after his discharge, he remained in DC before going back to New York and later to Toronto, Canada.


After he mustered out of the army, while still in Washington, DC he co-founded Edgewood Recording Studio in about 1958 with radio and television commentator Charles Osgood and composer George Wilkins. George later went to work for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts where he created scores and songs as Director of Music for Walt Disney Imagineering.


Ed returned to New York in about 1970, as chief engineer for MGM Records. There, in the early 1970's, he was brought into television audio mixing by Frank Sinatra, and became a very successful (22-time Emmy-winning and 61 nominations) audio mixer for television production and post production. He died in 2017 at age 82.


-- End of Accordian Window on "Back Story of Edgewood Recording Studio" --



After College

After college David continued participating in various singing activities, including:

After many years of singing, David began considering making something more lasting, i.e., his own recordings. Details about the beginning of that journey are found at Duets with Terry.



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