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The Miser - Stratford

I did the sound design on a modern take of Moliere's The Miser, the amazing Colm Feore was featured along with a stellar cast directed by Antoni Cimolino.
Total pleasure!

The Miser

Dixon Road - Music Stage/Obsidian

In the pit!
Had the pleasure of playing oud, acoustic and electric guitar for this great new musical in High Park.
Great band and team, lovely writing by Fatuma Adar and great MD with Chris Barillaro.

Dixon Road

Art in Transit - Luminato

What a crazy fun experience!
As part of Art in Transit I played banjo on different GO lines as part of a performance project put together by Luminato.

Art in Transit link

Richard III - Stratford

What an honour and privilege to get to work on this show!
Opening the brand new and beautiful sounding Tom Patterson Theatre, Antoni Cimolino's direction established a dark and beautiful world for Colm Feore and the cast.
I worked on the sound designer, with composer Bert Carriere, making use of the amazing new sound system and NS10 noise floor.
Really enjoyed using 7.1 wavs to create a full surround experience for the audience in that theatre.

Richard III Stratford page

Too True to be Good - Shaw

Shaw's play is a crazy tour of ideas, but perhaps the most fun and interesting way to get access to some of Shaw's philosophy.
Director Sanjay Talwar got the most of the cast and production for this show, total pleasure to work and watch.

Too True to be Good @ Shaw

Room - The Grand/Mirvish

Cancelled on opening night at the start of the pandemic, Room finally opened at the Grand in London, followed by a run for Mirvish at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
Phew.

Room

Bengal Tiger - Crows Theatre

We rehearsed and teched Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo for Crow's theatre, directed by Rouvan Silogix but were unfortunately shut down by Covid.
This show will open in October of 2022 now. Its a great piece and team, really an interesting view of war, peace, life and death.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

Stratford Director's projects

I had the pleasure to work with 4 young directors over a week to create showings as part of Stratford's Langham Director's Workshop.
Sadie Epstein-Fine
Marie Farsi
Christine Horne
Sara Jarvie-Clark
Lots of great ideas and pieces!

Langham Project

Cast Iron - Obsidian/Factory theatre

Binaural live radio drama!

Working with director Mumbi Tindebwa Otu and the great actor Alison Sealy-Smith we created a live binaural radio drama. We blocked the reading around my dummy head microphone, and with assistant Jacob Lin we created a mix of live foley and sound effects and music that helped bring Lisa Codrington's play about a woman's life growing up in Barbados.

Cast Iron web link

A Perfect Day - Laurence Lemiuex

Working with choreographer Laurence Lemiuex, I created a 10 channel surround sound design based on Bach's two part inventions.
Including an arrangement of Contrapuntal #1
Citadel + Compagnie web page

Switched - Theatre Panik

Director Paul Lambert created an audio podcast version of Anna Chatterton's play, Switched. I worked to record, edit, mix and produce the podcast/show. Using binaural foley and effects the piece has a lovely, fun feel.

Have a listen!

Switched!

Serving Elizabeth - Stratford Festival

Produced in a tent in the parking lot of the unused as yet, brand new, Tom Patterson theatre, Serving Elizabeth was a lovely experience. Under the direction of Kimberely Rampersad and composer Deb Sinha, we created a lovely show about colonialism and the Queen.

Serving Elizabeth

Onward Ho! - Julia Aplin

Wrote three songs for the dance piece and film for Dusk Dances. With Patrician O'Callaghan and Rick Hyslop on voice. Such a fun piece!


Sexy Laundry - Thousand Island Playhouse

Made a quick trip out to do music and sound design for Sexy Laundry at the Thousand Island Playhouse.
With Director Krista Jackson we had a lot of fun creating a world for this show. Including making a fake radio rock tune called 'Jello Baby' for the show and the excellent Sarah Dodd and Shawn Wright.

Sexy Laundry

Sherlock Holmes and The Raven's Curse - Shaw

We somehow managed to get the second Sherlock Holmes show up and running at the Shaw Festival!
With director Craig Hall and a great design team we rehearsed mostly on zoom until we were allowed full rehearsals outside at the Shaw Festival. The show was presented inside, and we teched the show with a couple of hundred sound cues without seeing a full run. The show was great, it ran under half capacity to good audiences and we hit a window in the pandemic when this was possible.

Composer and sound designer

Playbill

Life in Limbo - Julia Aplin

My partner created a lovely little piece for Porch View Dances' online series and I got to play some guitar and do a little sound design for the video.

Fun!

Linky

there she was - Alison McKinney

I wrote some music for Alison McKinney's strong solo, there she was. This piece was presented as part of the Citadel + Compagnie's livestreaming series.

Covid Videos!

Created a few little videos to up my skills and try out a few things, they're all on the Covid videos page here. I'm not quitting my day job but its fun to branch out a bit.

ATG Bound

I mixed and edited a video for Against The Grain opera, mixing home recorded videos sonically and doing the video edit for the piece as well. Its a beautiful little excerpt of a lovely opera.

Everything stopped

Pandemic, eh? Everything stopped and we all stay and hope things come back.
Thanks to our government for taking care of us through this.

Room

Well, that was close. We rehearsed, teched and previewed Room at the Grand Theatre in London, ON before it was supposed to head to Mirvish. Then the virus hit and we shut it down. A beautiful show that will hopefully live again one day.
Room

Jesus Hopped the A Train - Soulpepper

I had the pleasure to work on this production under the direction of Weyni Mengesha, the play was set in a prison and we used contact pickups on the bars, live mics and reverb to make the space bigger on occasion and one of my large outdoor speakers as a functioning set piece. Great piece and team, with a lot of subtle sounds as well as so much banging on metal prison bars.

Now review

The Front Page - Stratford Festival

Had the pleasure to work with Graham Abbey on Michael Healey's excellent adaptation of The Front Page. For this piece I had the pleasure of writing for an 8 piece jazz band, to set the play in its 1928 period. Such a luxury these days, and such fun to do an old school recording session with a live band.
John Gzowski · The Front Page


The Front Page

Audio Boots - Common Boots Theatre

What an excellent project! I worked with the folks at Common Boots theatre to do sound design for 6 short audio plays based around site specific ideas at Scadding Court. We recorded all the pieces in binaural sound, using my new dummy head, binaural microphone to create really effective 3d spatialization for all the pieces.
Scadding