World Premiere of “OAK” by Terry Guest, dir by Mikael Burke @ Urbanite Theatre (Sarasota, FL) | Composer & Sound Designer’s Notes on Original Horror Score by Brian Grimm

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New Play “Oak” by Terry Guest, directed by Mikael Burke runs May 31st through June 30th at Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, Florida! [ Get Tickets ]

It’s 7pm. Do you know where your children are? It’s snatching season, and town-wide curfew regulations have fostered a culture of fear in the community along Odella Creek. Too many have fallen victim to the freedoms promised by the red-eyed monster…Will cousins Suga, Big Man, and Pickle resist temptation, or become the next names in the morning news? Step into the darkness and experience the terror firsthand in the new Southern Gothic horror, OAK. (from Urbanite Theatre‘s site)

Oak’s Cast
Suga – Jaeda LaVonne
Pickle – Trezure B. Coles
Big Man – William Rose II
Peaches – DeAnna Wright*

Headshots and bios here
*Member of Actors Equity Association 

Creative Team
Playwright – Terry Guest
Director & Video Designer – Mikael Burke
Production Stage Manager/ Prop Designer – Tori Heikenfeld
Production Manager/Technical Director/Light Designer – Alex Pinchin
Assistant Stage Manager – Fiona Coffey
Composer and Sound Designer – Brian Grimm
Sound Engineer – Rew Tippin
Costume Designer – Adrienne Pitts
Scenic Designer – Frank Chavez
Master Carpenter – Eugene Alcorn
Scenic Charge – Anna Baldwin Lack
Graffiti Artist – Kaitlin Kelly
Production Photos – Sorcha Augustine

special thank yous section at the bottom of the post

“Oak” Urbanite Theatre production photos by Sorcha Augustine (c) 2024

Composer and Sound Designer’s Notes

First off, let me say that I’m a huge fan of both Terry Guest’s scripts and Mikael Burke’s directing.  As a lover of horror films and scary sounds, I was thrilled to be brought on board for this project. In preparation for Oak, I carefully selected a variety of modern horror classics that resonate with the themes of this play. You can expect to hear hints of iconic elements from recent horror hits such as the ‘IT’ and ‘Candyman’ series (both original and new), along with films like ‘Get Out,’ ‘Suspiria,’ ‘La Llorona’, and Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ woven into the fabric of the sound design & score.

Looking for old ghost story traditions and songs with roots in Africa, I was drawn to the haunting legend of La Tunda.  This tale shares an eerie resemblance to the chilling swamp ghost featured in Oak. This living legend of the shape-shifting spectre La Tunda, who comes out from the woods after 7pm to snatch your children comes from within the African descendant communities in Ecuador and Colombia.  It’s also a direct parallel to the Mexican and Central American ghost story of La Llorona. All of the original music in this production, including the main themes for Odella, derive directly from the melodic motifs, chord progressions, and rhythms used in the folklore songs and dances which spin tales and warnings of La Tunda. 

Another unique feature of my design is that the immersive swamp sounds accompanying the ghost’s presence are all crafted from vocalizations by the cast.  I have manipulated their vocal noises and run them through custom made “animal filters” of frogs, snakes, alligators, cicadas, rain, thunder, and more! This technique aims to blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, offering a glimpse into the eerie auditory landscape experienced by the characters.

*warning, some plot and production spoilers below*

Odella’s Whistle Themes

La Tunda / Odella themes sketch board

Since this entire process was completely remote for me, I decided to record some guided audio walkthroughs of my ideas for the Whistle Themes to send to the director, Mikael Burke. It was my first time doing something like this and it unintentionally created little podcast episodes, explaining and documenting the Whistle Theme process. I thought I’d share a version of episodes 2, 3 and 4 stitched together, for those who like that medium. Everything in the score for Oak comes out of these whistle themes:

Throughout the play, we hear Odella’s ghost whistling her entrancing lullaby from the swamp. These whistles serve as a constant reminder that she lurks in the distance, deep within the trees, waiting and ready to snatch you! During my initial research for similar ghost stories and lullabies within African descendant communities of the diaspora, I happened to be visiting my older brother and his family. As I described the story of Oak to them, my brother remarked how similar Terry’s swamp ghost Odella was to the Hispanic ghost story of La Llorona. Then my sister-in-law, who is from Ecuador, shared the parallel ghost story from where she grew up, called La Tunda. La Tunda is essentially the African counterpart of La Llorona. In the La Llorona ghost story, a mother drowns herself in the creek after her children accidentally drown there. In the La Tunda version, the mother loses her daughter deep in the woods of the mountain. After the tragedy, the mother returns as a ghost, emerging from the waters (La Llorona) or mountains (La Tunda), and shapeshifts to appear to children as their mother or close relative, enticing them to come to the waters/mountains so she can take the children away with her. Both La Llorona and La Tunda put the children in a trance, promising that everything will be alright in the water/mountain if they come with her. The ghost haunts on, perpetually searching for her lost children.

I couldn’t believe it; this was exactly like Odella’s ghost story in Oak, you just had to swap the woods or waters for the creek in the swamp. The similarities didn’t end there! My sister-in-law shared that growing up, they were all afraid to be outside after 7 pm. Once it got dark, they would rush home, fearing that La Tunda was real and would come to get them! Similarly, in the world of Oak, there is a siren alarm that goes off at 7pm every day to remind parents of the curfew and ensure their children make it home safely. It turns out there are several different La Tunda songs that recount her ghostly tale and issue warnings to the listener—so I wanted to start with those songs to see what sort of material could work for Odella’s whistle theme.

There are two parts of Odella’s main Whistle Theme. The first part of the phrase | C D— | C E— | (in solfege: do re—, do mi —) come from the background vocals in this song. You can hear them singing “La Tunda—- (do re, re—) La Tunda—- (do mi, mi—-)”. Which I simplified to the phrase you see above. I love the main vocalist and story teller in this rendition of the La Tunda song:

Here is the 1st tune where I sourced Odella Whistle Theme notes from in the background vocals

Chord Progression: from this first tune I utilized the spooky and fun diminished to minor chord progression. This chord progression can be seen in two ways, G# diminished to A minor which gives us more of a ghostly flavor. Or if you add an E in the bass of the first G# diminished chord, it turns it into an E7 chord. This stabilizes the progression by both chords sharing the E in the bass note, becoming an E7 to A- chord progression. I mostly leaned into the dissonance of the G# diminished flavor throughout the production.

The second part of Odella’s main Whistle Theme comes from this video of a La Tunda dance. We hear again in the background vocals some lyrics about La Tunda; the musical phrase is ||: – EEEE | F D – :|| (mi mi mi mi fa re – in the first tune’s key). In this lively dance, we see the ghost entrances the kids on stage, then ventures out to the audience and scares the kids so bad they start running away!

Here is the 2nd tune I sourced Odella Whistle Theme notes from, also in the backing vocals. A dance where La Tunda chasing after children and scaring them!

When combined together the themes go as such:
| C D— | C E— | EEEE | F D —- |
When transformed to be a little more melodic, it goes like this:
| C D — | C E — | C E F D —- |
Here is another melodic variation in a 3 count:
| C D – | C E – | D E E | F D – |

Bass Line: There is also an amazing 1/2 step bass line in this second tune which sometimes leads from G# up to A on the last beat of a measure to the down beat, and sometimes leads from Bb down to A. I use both motions quite extensively throughout the score of Oak for tension. Sometimes in series | Bb A—-| G# A—-| and sometimes in parallel with a double stop of Bb and G# together, resolving in a pure A octave!

Olélé Moliba Makasi – a Congolese lullaby.
I also searched for some West African lullabies that could complement these La Tunda whistle themes. After delving into various lullabies, I stumbled upon one from the Congo, coming from slightly further south than my initial search area. However, it resonated so well with the existing La Tunda themes that it became the perfect way to begin the original version of Odella’s theme. In the opening of the play, we hear the origin story of Odella. She was an enslaved person in America during the 17 or 18 hundreds who became impregnated by her master, and subsequently punished for it. Determined to escape the plantation, she faces the toughest decision of her life: to remain a slave and care for her baby, or to make a run for freedom, albeit leaving her child behind. She ultimately chooses freedom, soothing the child with this lullaby as she flees, whistling it from a distance.

The main melody we hear fits exactly with the existing La Tunda phrases:
||: C—D E – | C—D E, DE | D—, CD | C—- :||

~ and how perfect that it has water sounds in the music and is on the water!

The entire score for Oak, including all chords, scales, rhythms, and melodic material, is derived directly from the main elements of these La Tunda and Olélé Lullaby tunes. Of course, I am breaking them down into basic music elements and then recombining or twisting them to fit the needs of the production, but everything originates from the wellspring of this source material. In my notebook pages above, you can see that I created some scary hybrid scales, combining all the various note combinations of La Tunda themes, Olélé themes, and some other whistle intervals I had independently been developing. The La Tunda material is used when Odella (or the Wolf) is more threatening or “snatching” a child, while the Olélé lullaby themes are utilized when Odella is attempting to hypnotize the children to come with her.

Odella’s Music

Accompanying Odella, Oak’s swamp ghost, you will hear scary vocalizations from the cast, along with Odella’s Snatching Theme. This theme is based on the E F D note motif from the 2nd La Tunda tune discussed above, played here on the guzheng zither. These snatching themes are sometimes played with dulcimer hammers to create an eerie piano sound, while other times they are plucked with steady rhythm during Odella’s “trances”. Throughout the production, variations of these trances are used when Odella is attempting to charm the children. In the later trance portion of this cue, you can especially hear the sweetness of the Olélé Lullaby themes, as Odella tries to persuade the main character that everything will be just right down in the swamp waters if she but comes with her.

Here is the original sketch of Variations on Odella’s “Snatching Theme”. Some of these sections were utilized as the top of show theme and at the moments of a child being snatched by Odella.

The 7pm Siren

“It is 7pm, do you know where your children are?…”

Heard everyday in Oak across the swamp, this siren cue is made entirely out musical instruments. It includes 12 string guitar played with brass slide and distortion, cello siren wails, and bawu flute manipulated to sound like the buzzing alarm. The siren voice features the haunting vocals talents of Rebecca Rose Mims. I really love how this cue turned out, one-and-done!

˄ Keep an ear out for her, hopefully recorded for a book on tape near you soon, cause her voice is amazing!

The Princess and the Wolf

This cue deals with the trauma of a young survivor of sexual assault. In the show it is narrated by the cast and accompanied by a video projection of a paper puppet show. (Mikael edited it together and it looks incredible!!) The use of a puppet show is mentioned in the script and our production’s vision for it was inspired by the recent Candyman film. In both cases, it serves as a way to present trauma and violence against Black bodies, but with a visual layer of removal, acting as a defensive storytelling barrier. This approach aims to tell the story and spark conversation without completely triggering audience members (or those performing). In Candyman, the subject matter is of public brutality against Black people, whereas in this production, it deals with rape by a family member.

Given the title and the orchestrated storytelling, I couldn’t help but draw inspiration from Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” for narrator and orchestra. This piece has several cartoon adaptations and is in spirit with the puppet show concept. It absolutely influenced the brass chords accompanied by cymbal roll crescendos during moments where the Wolf appears. This storytelling method also resonates with Little Red Riding Hood themes and it parallels the Odella snatching scene at the end of the play.

All the chords and melodies in this cue stem from the Odella (La Tunda) Whistle Themes variations.

As part of the Wolf’s growl sound, you will hear a man’s zipper unzipping.

1st Lady Temple’s Swamp Environment, Cast Vocalizations & Animal Filters

For the scene introducing the enigmatic character 1st Lady Temple, I envisioned a swamp environment built entirely out of pre-recorded vocalized sounds made by the cast. This concept drew inspiration from Terry’s idea of the playful diy theater we create as children. Terry wanted to capture the vast imagination we possess as kids and how immense that world felt. I asked the cast to individually record a set of vocalizations including sirens, vocal tones, grunts, whispers, various animal sounds, and swamp sounds mentioned in the script. I then edited and manipulated these sounds to create the majority of the textures for both Odella and 1st Lady Temple. I wanted emotions like the fear, suspense, and danger that the cast is feeling to be manifested externally from the sounds and voices in her own head, much like the psychological terror in IT. When a character’s imagination takes over, the audience hears the soundscapes that the characters themselves imagined.

This approach, combined with another technique I called “animal filters”, resulted in one of the show’s most distinctive sound profiles. I began by manipulating the cast’s vocalizations to sound as close as possible to the real animal and swamp sounds they imitated. Then, I processed these sounds through “animal filters.” I created these filters by feeding different sounds—snake hisses, alligator growls, cicada calls, frog and toad croaks, and even landscape elements like calm lakes and thunderstorms—into a convolution reverb. Instead of using a traditional reverb impulse-response file, I loaded these natural sounds, allowing the vocalizations to be filtered through these real animal or environmental sounds. Instead of putting the source sound into a hall or room or other space like a normal reverb would, I was putting it inside of a swamp sound or animal noise.

This process not only altered the sounic profile of the original audio but also imprinted a subtle “ghost” of the filter’s own animal sound, creating a more intriguing and layered auditory experience. I used this extensively throughout the show to craft a unique swamp soundscape. Not only were the cast’s vocalizations filtered like this, but I also applied this treatment to all of Odella’s whistles, as well as the music instrument parts for the cello, 12-string guitar, and guzheng zither. This gave everything a cohesive, swampy animal filter reverb effect and really filled out the environment around the individual sounds.

Here are some examples of what that filtering effect sounds like.

Jaeda’s distressed bird sound. First plays the original, then examples are filtered through: warning croak of a frog, baby crocodile sound, barking tree frog, pig frog, two different snake hiss noises, the sound of rain, and sound of a calm lake. You’ll notice that through the filter, not only do you get the bird sound, but it comes with an environment surrounding it, a very powerful sound effect:

Next up is another creative sound from Jaeda! It’s a mosquito sound which became a sort of “mosquito violin” during the 1st Lady Temple and Odella scenes. Again first the original sound that was recorded, and then examples of it being filtered through an alligator roar, pig frogs, fowler toad, two different cicada sounds, a chorus of frogs at night in a swamp, and two different rain and thunder sounds:

The Whispers I had the cast record display very well the effects of these animal/swamp filters. Here are two different whisper environments run through a bunch of these filters. It’s the same chunk of the track and the filter changes about every 20 seconds, so you can skip around to quickly sample some different filter sounds – or if you are freaky like me, put this on while you are working on emails, or doing chores…

Swamp Whispers 1 – 15 filters

Swamp Whispers 2 – 13 filters

Night Terrors (1912 Atlanta)

Here, the 1912 version of the 7pm siren goes off as we transition into Big Man’s nightmare. This time, the siren cue incorporates real siren and police car sounds. To create the night terror texture, I utilized and manipulated a recording of Louis Armstrong and his Hot 7 playing a tune called “You’re Next.” The title perfectly fit the scene’s theme, where Big Man has a nightmare about the “Atlanta Ripper,” and the original track itself has a spooky undertone.

Although I initially believed this track was recorded between 1912 and 1915, I later discovered it was actually recorded in 1926—about a decade and a half later than the 1912 mark. Despite this, it was the closest match to what I envisioned and the first sound that came to mind for this scene.

The soundscape includes Odella’s whistle theme, twisted low bass harmonics, 12-string guitar accents highlighting specific lines, and dramatic horror cellos at the end.

As always, I put a lot of effort, time and care into my work. My scores and sound design go deep and are full of many layers. I do intend to put this out as a soundtrack and along with many other scores from the recent productions over the last 3 years. So please don’t download any of these tracks just yet, kindly wait till I release them officially to buy them! There is a lot going on in my life right now that has delayed these soundtrack releases – so thank you for your patience.

Much more on the way!

❤️ Brian

Special Thank Yous

For the first time on any production, I was remote/virtual for the entire process. It was a tougher room to mix than I had anticipated being that it is an L shaped room with an 11 speaker setup. Plus, it was a room I have never been in before, on a setup I’ve never heard, so there was a limit to how much I could envision the room and rough mix or conceptualize ahead of time. Plus! Zoom did such a fantastic job of cancelling out “noise” (aka my design), so much so that everytime we played back my sound or music cues, I could not hear it… the only thing I could hear was the actor’s voices. On top of that, I couldn’t see any wave forms in the remote control / zoom screen shared view of Qlab…. so it was quite an interesting and difficult experience to neither hear or nor see any of my sounds and still make adjustments. Wild! So an EXTRA SPECIAL THANK YOU goes out to Rew Tippin, who was the onsite sound engineer helping me mix and make adjustments in Qlab. I absolutely could not have done this show without you!!! Thanks for your amazing collaboration, advice, adjustments and perspective on the sounds in the space. It was so easy to communicate and work with you!

Unrelated, it was an extra stressful process due to a tornado rolling through Madison two nights before Tech started. This left me without power for 4 days, which obviously doesn’t work if you are trying to Zoom into work all day long! So another big thank you goes out to my parents, Rick and Bea, who allowed me and Zelda dog to take over their basement in order to have power and internet to complete my tech duties for about 5 days.

Another special thanks to Alex Pinchin, who on top of his duties of Production Manager, Technical Director, and Light Designer, was super responsive to any needs that I had from a distance during Tech. Alex also helped as an on site operator after hours when we worked on the live mic vocal effects for both the Wolf and Odella. Thanks for all that you do! I think we both learned some things on that mixer setup for this show!

Thanks to everyone at Urbanite Theatre on this production, the cast and crew, Mikael and Terry – y’all are amazing and I wish I could have been there in person to work with you all! ~ much love!

*Bonus Material for anyone who made it this far… here are a few other of my favorite La Tunda jams I was listening to >>

“La Tunda ah AAAA!”
great marimba like opening and groove!

12/13-12/31 | “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” at Third Avenue Playworks!

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IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE: A LIVE RADIO PLAY

ADAPTED BY JOE LANDRY

DIRECTED BY JACOB JANSSEN

DECEMBER 13 – 31, 2023

Wednesday, December 13: Pay-What-You-Will Preview
Thursday, December 14: Final Preview (ticketed)
Friday, December 15: Opening Night

Wednesday – Saturday evenings at 7:30pm
Friday matinee December 22nd at 2:00pm
Sunday matinees at 2:00pm
Saturday 12/30 matinee added!

Don’t touch that dial! The WBFR Radio Players are back with another holiday classic!

With the help of a musician and foley artist, a top-notch ensemble of actors once again brings a few dozen personalities to captivating life in this 1940s radio broadcast. Based on the story, The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern, the moving tale of idealistic George Bailey unfolds, as he considers his fate – and the fate of all the colorful characters in Bedford Falls – one eventful Christmas Eve. The entire family will enjoy this unique spin on one of America’s favorite films!

A Personal Note,

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is a story near and dear to my heart. For Christmas, we’d go down to Chicago to visit my Grandma Nerren and the rest of the Nerren family. And pretty much every year, we’d watch the 1946 Frank Capra classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. This movie and Jimmy Stewart’s performance are basically burned into my brain; I can so easily visualize each scene and hear the tape play back in my mind. It’s such a well rounded, complicated, emotional journey and quite frankly hits on the dark subject matter of suicide in a very real way. As a kid growing up, I didn’t have too many relatable life experiences with suicide (thankfully), but as I’ve gotten older and every few years suicide touches my life, whether a family member, or a friend, or a bandmate – this aspect hits home way more than it used to. Also, as one tries to navigate personal purpose and career path in life, this movie just feels more and more relatable. I think that’s a big part of why it has stuck around and stood the test of time. It’s not your typical holiday hallmark fluff, this story feels real. It’s takes a look at what really matters in your life: your family, your community, the well being of those around you physically & mentally, as well as their housing and opportunities; and appreciating all that you already have in your life. I’m thrilled and blessed to get to perform this story all December at TAP this year!

This performance is lovingly dedicated to my Nerren clan – Hee Haw and Merry Christmas!!
🎅🎄❤️❤️

“It’s a Wonderful Life” TAP Community Partner:

TAP’s Community Partner for “It’s A Wonderful Life” is Chop “N” Shop With A Cop!

Third Avenue Playworks pairs a Community Partner with every production they do and on the 1st Wednesday preview of the show, all of the proceeds from ticket sales are donated to that organization! This show’s community partner is Chop “N” Shop With a Cop; and on our Wednesday preview, TAP raised over $1,600 dollars to donate to the program!! I think that was TAP’s best donation haul yet. Thanks to everyone who came to that preview, the spirit in the hall was lively as their giving!

From the organization: “Founded in 2003 by Sheriff Tammy Sternard. This program provides a day of tree cutting, shopping for Christmas gifts for family members, wrapping the gifts, and just plain fun for 30 children from area Door County schools. For more information, please feel free to call with any questions at 920-746-2424. Thank you to all who helped in any way to make this years Chop “N” Shop With a Cop Program such a huge success.”

The Live Foley Sound Design

One main difference between this show and “Christmas Carol: A Live Radio Play” is the sheer amount of objects needed for the live Foley sound design to be performed. Last year we were able to make multiple uses out of less objects, but in the “It’s a Wonderful Life” script, there are just so many more individual sound effects that only happen once. There has to be at least double the amount of foley objects this year (if not more)! There are about 160 sound effect cues in the show and roughly 55 sound effect objects on stage; most of the foley objects only get used once or twice during the show! It’s a lot more to keep track of and pre-set, because of that Jacob (the director) and I really wanted to have the Actors handle as much of those cues as possible. We knew it’d be fun and visually more exciting for the audience to see the actors bouncing around the stage between lines to handle sound effects. Honestly, there are many times where 3 or 4 sounds happen overlapping or in quick succession and it would be near impossible for one foley artist to make all of those sounds anyway. Add on top of that, the sound effect cues very frequently overlap with the music cues marked in the script. There’s no way I could play a music cue and do 2-3 foley sounds concurrently. I’m already jumping from cello to glockenspiel to guitar like a madman as it is! Because the majority of these objects are used only once in the show, it makes this year’s production so much more sonically engaging. We hope you enjoy the incredible amount of unique sounds!

Foley Sound Objects for this production: door slam, wind machine, wash tub basin with cake lid, small cloth, metal cooler, celery, sugar glass, hammer, metal trash can lids, wind chimes, chimes bell, door with shop bell, men’s dress shoes, women’s high heels, glockenspiel and various mallets, toy piano, folk table harp, dulcimer hammers, cup with coins, glass jar, glass with soy beans, metal tin with soy beans, spoon, police whistle, crank siren, whiz whistle, triangle, prop phone, telephone bell, rotary dial and extension phone, analog metronome, wood box with removable top, beer bottles, high ball glasses, cajon, cajon brushes, wooden train whistle, zippo lighter, deposit bag, newspaper, metal container with spoon, cash box, cashier’s bell, car horn, gavel, aux percussion with ridges, harmonica, thunder tube, paperback books, deck of cards with rubber band, hot water bottle (the rubber “hot pad” fillable/inflatable kind), individual Christmas bells, silverware and plates, cornstarch in a nylon…

and… I think that’s everything! Roughly 57 objects listed! 🤯

For the audio nerds, I tried a new technique in mic’ing up the Foley table this year in order to get more coverage. I’m going with a Mid/Side configuration. I have a condenser mic as my “mid” mic pointing straight at me (behind the table) and this diaphragm actually does pic up quite a lot of the table. It’s what I used exclusively last year, though we’d sometimes turn the mic to highlight sounds coming from different parts of the table. But this year behind that mic, I have a figure 8 pattern Ribbon mic as my “sides” mic, and it absolutely fits the 1940’s radio vibe. This ribbon mic has the grills facing to the left and right side of the table to pick up all of the things happening on either side of the condenser mic. We’re really happy with how this Mid/Side setup worked out for the production this year!

The Music: LUX 1947 Radio Play Score & Folk Music

Last year, for “Christmas Carol: A Live Radio Play” I played music cues on cello and Treble Viola da Gamba, as well as glockenspiel. The main reason I chose the viol as a featured musical instrument was to capture the Dickensian 19th Century flavor of that story. The viol with it’s gut strings and sweet earthy tones really imbue the air with the textures of an older time. of centuries long past. This year I went in a totally different direction with the music cues, in two ways…

First of all, there is was an amazing recorded document of this story with both of the leads Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed reprising their starring roles from the 1946 film live on air as radio play!!!! I mean, come on, jackpot!! They were actually doing this live radio play version on Lux to promote the movie! So I went ahead and transcribed ALL of the music cues from this 1947 Lux Radio Theater production of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. I must say that I love the style of these cues, they were so much fun to transcribe and a blast to play on cello. They are so thick with the lyric style and tonal characteristics of the 1940’s-1950’s orchestral era.

One thing that shocked me was how little Foley sound design was in the 1947 Lux Radio production and just how sweeping and lush the 1940’s orchestral music was! Luckily, most of the music cues in the Lux show lined up exactly with the calls for music cues in the Joe Landry script (which is left up totally to the sound designer to decide what music to create or use). I first prepared all of the Lux music cues on solo cello, then Jacob and I decided to just try all of them in rehearsal to see which cues worked as is and which cues need some tweaking in the context of our production. I’m happy to report that I’m performing dang near all of these Lux cues! It creates such a different, deep and interesting tone as a thread throughout the play. A lot of them were truncated or modified to fit the flow of our staging, since the play moves a little faster than the 1947 radio version. In our show, it’s more helpful for the music to get in and get out during some of these moments, rather than to underscore completely.

Brian’s transcriptions of the Lux Radio Music Cues

The Lux score makes great use of both a Bø7 (B half-diminished 7 chord, aka B diminished triad with a minor 7th on top) and also the A+ (A augmented chord) which utilizes the Whole Tone scale starting on A in this case. Those two colors, the diminished scale and augmented whole-tone scale, which are very idiomatic to orchestral writing in the 1940’s for both the concert stage and radio drama productions, appear not only in moments of drama, as tremolo or oscillating between pairs of tritones moving in series of whole tones, but also as the color of the heavenly world (Clarence and Joseph) coming down to earth to observe and then interact with George Bailey throughout the play.

In addition to these Lux Radio cues being orchestrated for solo cello, I decided to dust off and old friend an pull it out of retirement: my trusty old 12 string guitar!! Now this guitar hasn’t seen a stage in about 20 years! Can you believe that! It’s been so so so much fun to reconnect with this past part of myself. I don’t think I’ve performed on guitar in about 15 years, and I don’t think I ever expected to perform on guitar again for the rest of my life… but I forgot how much I love the sound and feeling of the 12 string and am happy to pull it back in to the instrument rotation!

The reason I chose the 12 string guitar is very special to me, as it re-connects me to my roots. I wanted to capture the small town Americana feeling of Bedford Falls through Folk Music. Now originally, I was hunting for a mandocello (cello version of mandolin). I’ve wanted one forever, but they unfortunately are very rare to find these days. But when visiting my parents this fall, I looked over at the 12 string case and went, “Hey – wait a minute, the 12 string guitar is essentially a mandocello on bottom (octave doubled strings) and a mandolin on top (unison doubled strings)! ” And there you have it! I busted out the 12 string, reconnected with an old friend and here we are on stage together at long last!

I grew up in between 3 small towns: North Prairie, Eagle, & Mukwonago Wisconsin. We went to church in the smallest of those three towns, at the Methodist church in North Prairie. Now this church was about the best case scenario I could have asked for. It was small – anywhere from 35 to 100 parishioners on any given Sunday – and everyone knew everyone. You really felt the strong sense of community. We’d all catch up over coffee cake after service, and people would really check in with one another, and help one another out. There was a very active youth group volunteer community service component to the church, which my mom, Bea, was a central part of organizing (shout out to mom!!). So we had a strong community within the church and we were very active being of service in the community outside of the church too.

There was A LOT of music in our small church, specifically Folk music. Of course we had the classic church choir, which my father sang in, but we also had a folk quartet called Acoustic Grace who would sing a few songs each week. It was a couples duo where the wives sang and the husbands played guitar and sang. One of the musicians in that group, Tom Piper, was an excellent 12-string guitarist that I looked up to (he was also the father of some neighborhood best friends AJ and I had growing up). I always had that wonderful association with the fullness of 12-string guitar in that smaller quartet configuration, set in the comfort and warmth of that small church. So I grew up hearing 12 string guitar every week at my church via Acoustic Grace, but they weren’t the only folk group that played at our church! There was an all female acapella trio called Vita Voce who also sang regularly, and boy were they good too! Occasionally their husbands would accompany in folk flavor on guitar, but usually it was acapella. In addition to the Choir, Acoustic Grace, Vita Voce, and our Organist – we also had a Youth Band!

In fact, I learned Bass Guitar in church from our pastor Ron Krall! He had started a youth band, and said, “hey, I know you play cello and guitar, well bass guitar is basically those two instruments smushed together” (paraphrasing here). So one day after Sunday service, I stuck around, he handed me his acoustic-electric bass, showed me what the strings were and how to tune it. Then he set a boombox down on the table, popped in a cassette tape, and said, “now let’s learn a song by ear”. He hit play and the sounds of Jack Bruce’s bass lines pumped out. It was “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream, the famous 1960s rock trio featuring Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. Well, he helped me to figure out the tune by ear until I had it down, sent me home with the bass guitar, and then the next week we played that tune at the Easter Service!! Pastor Ron had changed all the lyrics to fit the theme of his service, “In the Sunshine of God’s Love”. How cool is that!! He totally roped me in with music that I already loved, did something totally rad by having us play that song in church (as my first bass guitar performance) – and I was hooked. So nearly every Sunday, I was either playing bass guitar for our large youth band or doing a few tunes with Ron and members of Acoustic Grace (or both). Ron really facilitated fun as a group through music for the youth in that church, it was a very special time. Ron would even sing some solo songs with his guitar, there was just so much Folk music going on; that’s really one of the ways I learned music by ear and cut my teeth as a bass player. I learned an incredible amount, had a blast, and am now so grateful that pastor Ron and all of the other musicians at the church wanted to get the youth involved. I also had many opportunities to play as a ‘cello soloist’ accompanying the choir alongside piano, and those are also cherished memories for me too.

The folk music and small town Americana vibe in this show is a love letter to that small church community I had growing up in North Prairie. ❤️

I pulled from my upbringing of playing folk music in church and brought that experience to “It’s A Wonderful Life: A Radio Play” for any of the moments where the Cast is singing a song on stage. One of the other special aspects of Folk Music and my family tradition that I’m bringing to this production is that many Christmas celebrations involved AJ on guitar and myself on cello (and now Anne on viola!) sight reading Christmas tunes from my Grandfather’s “Easy-Play Speed Music” Christmas Carols book (for all organs, pianos, guitars)!! This music book was always lying around near his organ at my Grandma Nerren’s house in Chicago. So AJ and I would randomly flip through it and start playing one of the very-easy-to-sight-read tunes while our family was relaxing during the holiday and at times singing along. I can’t think of anything more folk-music-christmas than that! For this production at TAP, all of the songs we are singing as a group and any of the Christmas tunes I’m playing on cello or guitar were prepared directly from my Grandpa’s easy-play Christmas book :-). This is another way in which I’m dedicating this performance to my family. ❤️

Wow.. you made it this far. Well, here are some fun Instagram posts and Zelda photos as a reward!
Look out below! A rare 12 string sighting >>

It’s Zelda’s 1st time up in Sturgeon Bay, and she got to be a #TechDog!!!

Needless to say she’s made herself quite at home in the lovely TAP apartments! hahah

11/11 | BC Grimm (prepared guzheng) , Def Sonic, & Hunter Nicholson @ Common Sage! (Madison, WI)

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Check out this incredible poster art by @assortedpsychedelia Andrieu Todd!!! 😍😍😍

Saturday, 11/11/2023
Common Sage
934 Drake Street

BC Grimm
Def Sonic
Hunter Nicholson

Potluck @ 7pm
Music @ 8pm
$10 suggested donation

I’ll be performing the title track from my 2014 album of experimental zither music called, “The Ideating Knell”. It’s a long-form piece for a ‘prepared guzheng’ Chinese zither, exploring all of the non-traditional sounds you can make on the instrument. In the spirit of John Cage’s groundbreaking solo prepared piano works, this music prepares the guzheng with shell necklaces, clay pottery tools, mixing bowls, small gongs, bows, dulcimer hammers, clay teapot shards, and more! I would describe the 21-string guzheng with its spine of bridges and large coffin-like resonating chamber as a “cathedral of sounds”.

I’m very excited for this opportunity to perform at Common Sage, hosted by Tim Russell and Liz Sexe! An experimental musician and dancer couple who I’ve known nearly the entire time I’ve been in Madison! What they are cultivating with these monthly experimental house shows and potlucks is in kindred spirit to what Ka Baird used to do in Madison before she moved to NYC. It is helping to rekindle a sense of community for the experimental and improvised community here in Madison. It’s something that’s been missing in our scene for years now, and I’m so glad it’s back!! It’s been really hard for Tim and me to schedule a month where I’d be around and available to perform, and we finally got one! Hope to see some of you tomorrow night!

I’ll be taking the new sounds that I’ve been creating for this updated version of the piece and working on a new album of prepared guzheng music for another label soon! More details to come in the coming months, but I’m very excited to release a new album of prepared guzheng sounds on the 10th anniversary of the original release of this concept!

From a performance of the piece at an outdoor festival back in 2014, photo by Audre Rae Photography
Picture of the setup from a recent performance of The Ideating Knell in Cleveland, OH at the Cleveland Institute of Art

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“The Ideating Knell” composition for “prepared guzheng zither” ↘︎

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“The Ideating Knell” (2014) full album on Signal Dreams label ↘︎

9/7-9/24 | Forward Theater’s THE GARBOLOGISTS runs at the Overture Center for the Arts (Madison, WI) w/ Designer’s Notes on Original Score

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Forward Theater Co. Presents:
THE GARBOLOGISTS
Playhouse Theater at the Overture Center for the Arts
TICKETS + dates & info

by Lindsay Joelle
September 7-24, 2023

Wisconsin Premiere

Directed by Jen Uphoff Gray

Featuring Alys Dickerson and Danny Jones

Scenic Designer: Sarah Ross
Lighting Designer: Colin Gawronski
Costume Designer: Karen Brown-Larimore
Sound Designer/Composer: Brian Grimm
Props Master/Asst. Scenic Designer: Pam Miles
Technical Director: Tony Lyons
Stage Manager: Tenley Pitonzo
Asst. Stage Manager: Abbi Hess

~ If you see the show and stay for the Talkback, be sure to ask the actors about their ride-along with the Madison Sanitation Department!!

~ Also, be sure get to the show early to check out the visual art exhibit in the gallery area outside of the Playhouse Theater. It’s hosted by Arts + Lit Laboratory and comprises of art pieces made out of trash and recycling!


Some details on the show from Forward Theater:
This off-beat buddy comedy pairs essential workers from two different worlds in the shared cab of a New York City garbage truck. Danny’s a white, blue-collar mansplainer hiding a heart of gold. Marlowe’s a Black, Ivy League-educated newbie learning the ropes from her old-school partner. When they’re thrown together to pick up what the world has discarded, they discover there’s more that binds them than taking out the trash.

“A surprisingly humane and honest play that’s filled with as much laughter as it is drama…and reminds us that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. We learn that if given a tattered, grimy old volume of text and illustrations, and you take the time to examine it carefully, its value can exceed your imagination.”
– Chicago Theatre Review

 ASL-Interpreted Performance: Saturday, Sept. 23 at 2pm – Reserve here for special pricing and unobstructed view of the interpreters.

 Audio Described Performance: Sunday, Sept. 24 at 2pm – Please email ssafarik@forwardtheater.com us to let us know you’re coming, so we can make sure you have the correct device and a great experience.

🤩 Playwright Lindsay Joelle to attend Wednesday, September 13th talkback!!

Notes on Sound Design and Original Score by Brian Grimm

** Please do not download these files, I’m streaming them here as a preview – if you want a copy of the album, wait for the official soundtrack to come out for purchase on GrimmusiK Records bandcamp. ** Thanks!!! ❤️ Brian

The Music is Trash…

That’s right! You heard me! You didn’t even have to hear it from a critic or local theater review – this is comin’ straight from the source! The original music in this production is entirely made from trash, garbage, and recycling that I recorded. It was an absolute blast to record all of these fascinating sounds to see what sort of grooves naturally presented themselves and then build music cues from there. These garbage grooves feature aluminum cans, milk cartons, yogurt containers, a broken margarita glass, cardboard boxes, paper and plastic cups, paper and plastic bags, velcro, olive oil and wine bottles, an old beat up carbon steel wok and more!

Stage Prop Sounds
I also had a very fun recording session at the Overture Center, where I recorded a bunch of the props that are featured as garbage on stage throughout the production. In the music, you’ll hear a ton of percussion created from a mannequin, cat crate, birdcage, campfire pot, bamboo steamer, suitcase, along with some plastic and metal fans that were in the dressing room!

Kalimba Theme
The one exception in this landscape of trash music is the kalimba thumb piano; which was a delightful Christmas gift from my parents this year! The kalimba theme that I recorded is tied to one character specifically and appears four times throughout the show. That’s all I’ll say to avoid any spoilers. But if you see the show, see if you can catch all of the times this theme appears!

Special Sound Design Moments from Trash
I utilized the trash, recycling and prop sounds a few times in the show that became a mix of sound design, field recording and musical elements. One example is a panic attack moment of anxiety that one of the characters suddenly finds themselves in. To heighten this uncomfortable feeling, I added a crescendo and accelerando of a heart beat sound, which was actually made by striking a cardboard box with my thumb (the sound turned out great!). The feeling grows as the city soundscape also crescendos, accompanied by unsettling birdcage sounds and a distorted and slowed down version of the kalimba theme in the background.

Another example is the lovely quiet Interlude that we get in the middle of the show. A winter storm comes rolling over New York City. To create the atmosphere of blowing winter wind between the buildings I blew on a wine bottle to get a few breathy pitches and I used the ringing sustained sound I got from the birdcage after I would strike it with one end down on the ground and one end up and slowly lower it all the way down as it rang out. It was one of the most fascinating sounds I captured. This is all set in the backdrop of actual sounds of snow falling. Eventually the truck starts moving and the city sounds take over again as we start the next scene and carry on with the play.

The way that the city sounds, and musical sounds interact are very similar to a piece I composed back in 2018 called “They’re Still Here”, a 30 minute long Musique Concrète élégie honoring loved ones who’d passed that year. This unique piece of music dealt with how we handle (or don’t handle) the grieving process our modern society – which actually ties back into one of the themes of this play.


Sound Design
Obviously, there are a lot of garbage truck sounds and city soundscapes throughout the play. It’s about a 50/50 mix of sounds that I recorded and sounds that I collected from archives elsewhere. I did spend an entire morning waiting in my driveway for the recycling and garbage trucks to come by so I could record them. One big mistake I made; I forgot to charge my field recorder the night before. So I had it plugged into the side of the garage to get some charge and then every time I heard a garbage truck making a turn down a nearby street in the neighborhood I quickly yanked my recorder out of the outlet and ran over to our fire hydrant (right next to the trash cans) and hurriedly whispered which take and what type of truck was coming by. Then tried to play it cool by hanging out with my dog in the front yard as Anne did some weeding in the garden. We would celebrate (silently) with big fist pumps everytime a big, loud, fun garbage truck sound was captured.

Similarly, the city street sounds & construction sounds were about a 50/50 mix of recorded and found. But in the bar scene, Anne and I went on an undercover field recording mission at a local bar! I won’t name the establishment, but I will say that for a 7pm on a Monday night, it was a lot more crowded and way more drunk than I anticipated…

One of the main issues we faced with all of the garbage truck sounds I recorded and collected is that they were the type of trash collection where the truck grabs the garbage can with an mechanical arm and dumps the trash into the hopper – whereas the NYC sanitation workers are manually loading bags into the hopper. This made it difficult to use the longer stretches of garbage trucks driving, because they all had frequent stops with mechanic arm and dumping/crushing sounds. It made for a lot of stitching, layering, and editing together individual pieces of many different sound clips to create the one fluid sound that you hear in the show from one garbage truck sound to the next.

A Nod to Inspirations from Recycled Music Makers Around the Globe

One of my starting points of inspiration for the music, knowing that it would be heavily percussive and utilizing trash was the famous percussion show on broadway called “Stomp!”. I thought of that vibe as a good launching off point. Something percussive, from NY, with a lot of energy that can move us forward from scene to scene. However, the true main inspiration for taking all of the trash and recycling and creating music exclusively from those items came from various ensembles around the world that have done just that. For instance the “Landfill Harmonic” in Cateura, Paraguay; which is a youth orchestra who built their instruments from trash in their local landfill. Making beautiful music from the ugly and discarded junk that finds its way to their home. In the play, the character Danny explains that you throw something away and it might be shipped to a landfill in India, etc, your discarded trash may see more of the world than you ever do in your whole life. And who knows how it affects the people where it ends up.


I had remembered this orchestra in the back of my head when we started this project and thought of them and how they use the trash of their landfill in such a positive way as a major point of inspiration. I also was thinking of the Eco-Afro-Futuristic punk ensemble Fulu Miziki @fulumusic (roughly translates to “music from garbage”) that I started following in recent years on instagram who also hand makes their instruments and performance outfits out of trash and recycling.

About the band:
Fulu Miziki is a collective of artists who comes straight from a future where humans have reconciled with mother earth and with themselves. This multidisciplinary collective of artists is based in the heart of the Congolese capital city Kinshasa and was founded by Pisko Crane. For several years now, it’s founder Pisko has spent an amount of time conceptualizing an orchestra made from objects found in the trash, constantly changing instruments, always in search of new sounds.

Making our own performance costumes, masks and instruments is essential to their approach of Fulu Miziki’s musical ideology. Their unique sound supports a pan-African message of artistic liberation, peace and a severe look at the ecological situation of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the whole world. For Fulu everything can be recovered and re-enchanted.


There’s also a singer who goes by Mc-Deive @mc.deive_ that I started following on instagram. I don’t know much about him other than he seems to sing about Brazil a lot and is maybe in Angola, Africa? Maybe someone can help me out here. All I know is that he sings super catchy songs while accompanying himself on an empty plastic water bottle with his camera man/hype man and that you should follow him!

As a follow up I’ll say that I wasn’t specifically trying to emulate the genre of music after any of these groups, it was purely the concept of trash music that I was taking as inspiration. All of the music genres I created for the show I let occur naturally. I let the trash tell me what grooves it wanted to play and went from there. There are some similarities to Fulu Miziki’s style, but that is more the nature of both projects exclusively using trash as it sounds, and being primarily percussive in nature – which will lead to some similarities. However, it was not my intention to copy their music style nor did I listen to them or any other groups when I was recording and composing this music.