Gareth Owen is a twelve-timeTony &Olivier award-winning / nominated[1]Broadway andWest Endsound designer, described as "one of the only behind-the-scenes creatives whose star wattage spells success for theatrical productions".[2]
Owens theatre career began when he was invited to mix the musicalThe Blues Brothers which was running at what is now theTrafalgar Studios inLondonswest end. About this time, Owen is quoted as saying "I didn't have a lot of money so I bought atent and lived in the band'sgarden".[11] From here he was offered a job as sound designer for the UK tour ofStephen Schwartz' musicalGodspell,[12] beginning a collaboration which would continue until the present day.[13] Owen went on to design a number of shows in a freelance capacity, before joining London's Orbital Sound as a full-timesound designer.[14] In late 2009, Owen left Orbital Sound and formed his own company, Gareth Owen Sound,[15] which he describes as "smoke and mirrors" in theSpotifypodcastConversations with Sound Designers.[16]
Discussing collaboration in musical theatre, Owen is quoted as saying, "I find that the key to making shows sound good is to collaborate with the people who know best what [the sound] is supposed to be. It would be not just arrogant, but shortsighted and stupid of me to not become best friends withAlicia Keys andAdam Blackstone because let's think: who knows what Alicia Keys music is supposed to sound like...? Alicia Keys."[10]
Interviewed regarding stagefoldback, Owen says "I'm a great believer that if the musicians, andcast for that matter, hear what they need to hear, they will perform better. And [sic] if they perform better, they will sound better... and then everyone will be like, 'Hey, thesound design is really good...'[42]
Sixteen-timeGrammy winning artisteAlicia Keys with Broadway sound designer Gareth Owen at the first preview of Key'sHell's Kitchen on Broadway.
Discussing acoustic volume of shows in a 2024LSI Magazine interview, entitled "Making Broadway Rock", Owen, captioned as "Broadway's King of Pop" says "[in the theatre], when people say they want thingsloud, they don't meanBon Jovi inWembley Stadium loud."[43] He follows up on this in another article inFOH Magazine saying "In my experience when people talk about things being loud, they don’t necessarily mean it’s too loud. They mean that certain frequencies are aggressive and painful. In my experience, you can actually make things quite loud if you keep control of the sound, if it rises involume in a relatively uniform, relativelylinear manner. If all thefrequencies rise together, it doesn’t become screechy or aggressive or punchy.”[44]
Owen's creativeethos has been discussed at length in multiple interviews, however the most succinct summation of his design philosophy reads “Thetraditional music theatre sound for a long time was about pretending that sound didn’t exist. It was all aboutmicrophones hidden in the hair, the sound of the orchestra coming out of theorchestra pit and voices coming from the people onstage. A ‘good’ sound design was considered to be one you wouldn’t know was there. Today, people go to themovies, hear anorchestra swell around them and they feel it. They put in theirAirPods and hear amazing sound, get in their car and hear 29 speakers, or spend $600 atTarget on an amazing surround system for their front room—and yet we still go to a theatre and pretend like sound doesn’t exist! I realised, ‘No, the world’s moved on. I’m going to stop apologising for sound.’ I made a conscious decision to take it in a completely different direction, which is a cinematic sound design - so I don’t really do shows that sound like traditionalBroadway shows; that’s not really my thing.”[45]
With regard to immersive audio, Owen says, "It’s not a new concept, but it is a newbuzzword. We are theatre people, and we’ve been doing what I callimmersive audio for decades: putting people in the middle of the sound; and finding ways of localising sound sources from theaudience’s perspective. That istheatre sound design..."[46]
Owen is also listed as the sound designer and original creative for theLondon Palladium ChristmasPantomime from its inception in 2016 through until 2021. His company, Gareth Owen Sound, remains credited as sound designer until 2024.
Sound designer Gareth Owen andcomedianLee Evans during Barking in Essex rehearsals inLondon in 2013.
Owen has worked assound designer on the followingWest End straightplays inLondon, although the timeline suggests he is no longer active in this particular discipline:
Over the course of the decade from 2004 to 2014, Owen designed many of the musicals and plays atOff-West End theatre, TheMenier Chocolate Factory in London.[52]
Owen is also listed as the sound designer for the 2006 Menier production ofSunday in the Park with George[53] but he does not include this production on any listed resume or biography.
Owen is credited with a long list of technical achievements and industry firsts.
Despite being quoted as saying that immersive audio "is not a new concept, but it is a new buzzword",[46] Owen is considered to be a pioneer in the field ofimmersive theatre sound. Owen was the first person to use theobject basedwave field synthesis immersive audio in both Londons West End[54] and on New Yorks Broadway,[55] for the musicalsCome from Away andDiana, respectively. He created the world's first sound design to incorporate object based mixing in to a rotating auditorium[56] forAndrew Lloyd WebbersCinderella musical at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London; and what was, at the time, the largest SoundScape installation in the world[57] forarena musicalStarlight Express. Owen is also credited as the first person to integrate wireless tracking of performers in to an object based sound system on Broadway,[58] this time forMJ the Musical. Indeed, he and his team are credited with creating one of the industry standard control applications for live immersive audio,[59] d&b's EnSnap,[60] used on multiple shows and productions around the world.[61]
Owen's use and development of cutting-edge technologies is not limited to immersive audio. He is believed to have designed the show with the largest number ofradio mics ever used on a west end musical,[62]42nd Street at LondonsDrury Lane. He was the first person to use the d&b KSLline array system[63] on both a Broadway show and on a west end musical, in both cases for Back to the Future the musical. He was the first person to use the d&b XSL line array system on a Broadway show, this time for & Juliet at theSondheim theater. Owen was the first person to use a DiGiComixing console in theatre,[64] the now defunct D5, for the UK Tour of theCliff Richard musicalSummer Holiday.[65] He is credited as being the first to use both theAvid Venue mixing console[66] and theAvid S6L mixing console in theatre, for the showsAnnie Get Your Gun and BroadwaysCome From Away respectively. Owen was one of the early adopters of computer game audio engines to create dynamic sound effects in theatre, notably on Broadway'sBack to the Future musical.[67]
The Fourier Audio transform.engine at theNAMM trade show inLos Angeles.
Owen is co-founder andCCO of audio hardware manufacturerFourier Audio,[68] where he is "working to redefine the future of pro audio".[69] In 2023, he and his co-founders Henry Harrod and Peter Bridgman sold Fourier Audio to livemixing desk manufacturerDiGiCo for an undisclosed multi-million pound sum.[70] From this springboard they went on to release thetransform.engine, a revolutionary VSTplugin host, designed exclusively for the live environment,[71] which won thePLASAInnovation Award.[72]
Owen is also a co-founder of the software house Show Control Ltd, a company specialising in thecoding and development of dedicated theatricalshow control systems.[73] There is little information available regarding this endeavour beyond a list of the developedsoftware on Owen's website.[74]
In 2009, Owen joined a steeringcommittee that eventually formed theAssociation of Sound Designers[75] where he served as a committee member for the maximum term of five years, from 2012 to 2018.[76]
In 2022, Owen was presented with an HonoraryDoctorate[77] from theUniversity of Salford,[78] for pushing the boundaries of modern sound design techniques, particularly in the field ofspatial audio and musical theatre sound design.
2024 saw Owen collaborate with "pioneer of modern sound design"[79]Martin Levan to present a series oflectures[80] on sound design at London'sPLASA show.
