Colin Leonard earned his second consecutive Grammy Award for Album of the Year in Los Angeles Sunday night — something that doesn’t happen very often for mastering engineers — saying that he is grateful beyond words.

“To be part of music that’s honored two years in a row, is something I don’t take lightly,” Leonard, an Auburn native, wrote on Instagram. “Thankful for the artists, the teams, the trust, and for every opportunity to shape the music.”

Flying home to Atlanta, where his SING Mastering studio is based, Leonard told the Sun Journal in an email, “It feels surreal! I feel like I’m living in a dream right now.”

Last year, Leonard won a Grammy for Album of the Year for Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter,” and the year before he won Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for “Jaguar II” by Victoria Monét. 

In November, Leonard also won a Latin Grammy for Album of the Year, mastering Bad Bunny’s Album of the Year, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which in English means “I Should Have Taken More Photos.”

Three Grammy Awards, one Latin Grammy Award and 18 nominations are a reflection of how the music and recording industries see Leonard.

Mastering engineers are the final quality control stop for recorded music, making adjustments to music tracks and putting the polish on productions.

“What I’m doing is listening to the song and the mixes that I get from an overall standpoint and making creative decisions to make those recordings sound as good as possible to the listener in their listening environment,” Leonard told the Sun Journal last year.

Sunday night’s awards also represent the first Spanish song to win in the Record of the Year category at the Grammys and only the second foreign language song to win since 1959.

Leonard’s grandmother was a musical child prodigy in Cuba. She went on to have her own radio show as a teen and sang opera at Havana’s opera house before moving to New York City to become a star and a U.S. citizen.

Leonard attended North Yarmouth Academy and Edward Little High School in Auburn.