Training & Support

Ever since doing theater production in his Virginia high school to get much needed extra credit in his debate class, Daniel has been passionate about the art of live audio. In college he found himself regularly running FOH for many large events as well as joining forces with the local crews as an arena rigger. In 2010 Daniel moved from Virginia to Seattle to see about a lady (his now wife). There he got deeply involved with corporate rental/staging as the Director of Staging at a production company. Daniel joined the Yamaha Team in early 2019. He has a passion for music and loves working for a company that has music roots running as deep as Yamaha’s. Originally hired by Yamaha to assist with NEXO loudspeaker sales, Daniel now leads the Field Sales Engineer team. Daniel is also much better now at debating – just ask his wife.

Joe has been with Yamaha since 2005. Before that, he worked for Nexo USA and two previous professional audio manufacturers in addition to touring, event production, and installation experience. Joe has a degree in electrical engineering and has worked in professional audio since 1992. Most of his expertise is related to speaker systems and amplifiers, providing product application and design support for customers but while at Yamaha Joe has become skilled with consoles, DSP products, and audio networks. Joe’s current responsibilities at Yamaha include product application and system design support to consultants and integrators. Joe is also the lead on promoting and marketing of Active Field Control, Yamaha’s acoustic enhancement system including design support and coordination of AFC projects.

Wes Hershberger brings a background in House of Worship AVL Integration, and several years as a Church TD to the FSE Team within Yamaha Pro Audio and NEXO. Brought on in 2020, Wes understands the complex dynamics involved in HoW and Installation projects and puts that to work in supporting not only our channel partners, but Pastors, Technical Directors, Theatre Managers and Project Managers alike. With dozens of NEXO designs and installations, and Yamaha console systems deployed of all sizes and complexities, Wes champions not only product knowledge, but also harnesses the unique design philosophy required in today’s church and beyond into theatres and performing arts centers alike. Wes’s passion is to see technical artists in Houses of Worship, Theatres, and more use the best tools, designed for the right job, deployed to the best of their abilities to ultimately support the greater vision and message of the Church.

Kevin Kimmel's audio career began mixing monitors on a world tour in 1979.

After moving from Pennsylvania to California in 1981 he worked in post production for film, most notably on Raging Bull. He worked as a stage technician and system designer at Disneyland from 1981-2018.

While on staff at Disney he also freelanced in many capacities including touring as FOH mixer for Louis Miguel, Dave Mason and others.

There were several recording studio projects from Ray Charles, Tower of Power, Bobby Caldwell, Three Dog Night to name a few.

Between 1994 to present Kevin has mixed production on television shows and mixed either monitors or FOH for a wide variety of TV shows including mixing monitors on the Grammy Premiere Show for the last 10 years.

He has designed and installed sound systems for several churches and night clubs.

Kevin started with Yamaha as the Product Manager for Mixers-N. America in 2009 and currently is a Systems Application Engineer with focus on Rivage and other mixing consoles.

Russ spent over three decades as an independent, Nashville based, studio and touring engineer. He spent 13 years as the FOH engineer for Steven Curtis Chapman and 14 years as Amy Grant’s FOH engineer. During his career, Russ mixed numerous high-profile events including the KLOVE Music awards (2013-2015 & 2018), the Challenge America Musical Gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC featuring Michael McDonald, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill and Darius Rucker, and Barbara Bush’s 90th Birthday concert featuring Reba McEntire and Michael W. Smith.

His diverse list of studio album credits includes Sixpence None the Richer, Wilco, Newsboys, Over the Rhine, Dolly Parton, and Mercy Me. His film soundtrack engineering credits include the soundtracks to the Girl Interrupted, Here On Earth, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, She's All That, and Hannah Montana: The Movie motion pictures.

Russ has been part of the audio team for numerous broadcast events including the Grammy Awards (2017, 2018), the CMA Awards (2012-2018), ABC’s "CMA Music Festival: Country's Night to Rock" TV Special (2012-2018), and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest (2014). A 20+ year AES and NARAS member, Russ has authored over 150 articles and equipment reviews for various publications including Pro Audio Review, Mix, Pro Sound News, & Radio World.

Russ joined Yamaha’s R&D team in October 2018 where his primary focus is large format console development.