Sandy Thorburn
Encyclopedia
Sandy Thorburn is a noted Canadian composer, arranger, theatre director, musical director, and academic, specializing in Canadian musical theatre. He is the only Canadian musical scholar to specialize in Canadian musical theatre.
Education.
He holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours) from McGill University
, a Graduate Diploma in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television from the University of Southern California
, and a Master's Degree and a PhD in musicology
from the University of Toronto
. He is also one of a very few Canadian academics who have studied with notable film composers Jerry Goldsmith
, John Williams
, Bruce Broughton
, Henry Mancini
, and Buddy Baker
at the University of Southern California
Thornton School of Music
in composition for motion pictures and television. He worked as an orchestrator for several American television programs including In the Heat of the Night
, and worked as an orchestrator for several Hollywood Films including Star Trek V.
Career.
He has been resident musical director of The Thousand Islands Playhouse
since 1986, and has musically directed numerous musicals including Man of La Mancha
, Little Shop of Horrors
, Dads in Bondage, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
, The Shooting of Dan McGrew
, Anne of Green Gables
(1997, 1998, 2005), Guys and Dolls (1998, 1999), Oliver!
, Anne Chislett and David Archibald's The Perilous Pirate's Daughter, The Music Man
(2004), The Beggar's Opera
(2006), Anne and Gilbert (2007) by Nancy White
, Jeff Hochhauser, and Bob Johnston. This production holds the distinction of being the only Canadian musical given a rave review by Variety Magazine. He also musically directed Glorious!, Les Misérables
(2008), Forever Plaid
, The Drowsy Chaperone
(2009) and Blood Brothers (2010).
He has also directed two highly regarded productions including Forever Plaid
(2009) which was remounted at the Victoria Playhouse, Petrolia, and subsequently at the Mississauga Living Arts Centre near Toronto, Canada and Billy Bishop Goes to War
(2011) by John Gray, which will be remounted a the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope in 2012.
He has also been associated with Silvermist Productions in Niagara Falls
, working as Musical Director and Music Supervisor for several productions, including Disney's Beauty and the Beast, the Canadian premiere of High School Musical II, and a Geoffrey Whynot's Ebenezer Scrooge: A Carol for Christmas (2009), and he directed a highly acclaimed production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
(2011) starring Jersey Boys
star, Adrian Marchuk as Joseph.
Scholarly Work.
He has taught music history, theory, ear training, performance and composition at McMaster University
in Hamilton, Ontario
, where he organized the Over the Waves international conference on music in/and broadcasting, as well as at the Faculty of Music, Scarborough College, and Knox College at the University of Toronto
, the University of Waterloo
, the University of Western Ontario
, Wilfrid Laurier University
, and Lakehead University
in Orillia. He has also taught musical theatre performance at St. Lawrence College
in Brockville.
Thorburn is preparing a volume on Music and Broadcasting for Oxford University Press called Over the Waves with co-editors James Deaville (Carleton) and Christina Baade (McMaster).
Film Music, Television and Radio Credits
He spent several years (1990–93) as composer for CBC-Newsworld (now CBC News Network), composing themes for Ideas on Camera, The Media File, The Medicine File, The Passionate Eye, Vis-A-Vis, and other programs. More recently, he has appeared on In Performance with Eric Friesen, and was musical consultant and researcher for the new CBC2 series Peter The Symphony, hosted by Friesen, with Toronto Symphony Orchestra
conductor Peter Oundjian
.
Church Music.
He has been organist and choir director of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Toronto since 2006, and was also made director of music at Deer Park United Church since 2009. He previously held the same position at Celebration Presbyterian Church on Coldstream Avenue in Toronto. He is a regular lecturer and speaker on music, opera, theatre, and musical theatre, and has been a member of the Canadian Opera Company Speakers Bureau since 1999. He is a lecturer at Knox College, University of Toronto in Music in Christian Spirituality .
He lives in Toronto with his wife, actress Ramona Gilmour-Darling
, star of The Big Comfy Couch
children's television program, and their son Sasha.
Education.
He holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours) from McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
, a Graduate Diploma in Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television from the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, and a Master's Degree and a PhD in musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
from the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
. He is also one of a very few Canadian academics who have studied with notable film composers Jerry Goldsmith
Jerry Goldsmith
Jerrald King Goldsmith was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring....
, John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
, Bruce Broughton
Bruce Broughton
Bruce Broughton is a film, video game, and television soundtrack composer who has composed several highly acclaimed soundtracks over his extensive career, including American music classics such as "Homeward Bound," "Silverado", "Tombstone," and wonderfully lyric music for "Miracle on 34th...
, Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...
, and Buddy Baker
Buddy Baker
Elzie Wylie Baker, Jr. , nicknamed "Leadfoot" or more famously Buddy, is a former American NASCAR racecar driver.-Early life:...
at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
Thornton School of Music
USC Thornton School of Music
The University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, founded in 1884 and dedicated in 1999, is one of the premier music schools in the United States...
in composition for motion pictures and television. He worked as an orchestrator for several American television programs including In the Heat of the Night
In the Heat of the Night (TV series)
In the Heat of the Night is a television series based on the motion picture and novel of the same name. It was broadcast on NBC from 1988 until 1992, and then on CBS until 1995...
, and worked as an orchestrator for several Hollywood Films including Star Trek V.
Career.
He has been resident musical director of The Thousand Islands Playhouse
The Thousand Islands Playhouse
The Thousand Islands Playhouse is a highly successful summer theatre company located in Gananoque, Ontario, Canada.The Thousand Islands Playhouse was founded in 1981 by Greg Wanless and a collection of local actors and graduates from Queen's University including Timm Hughes, Joan Gardiner, Mo Bock,...
since 1986, and has musically directed numerous musicals including Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...
, Little Shop of Horrors
Little Shop of Horrors (musical)
Little Shop of Horrors is a rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman...
, Dads in Bondage, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart....
, The Shooting of Dan McGrew
The Shooting of Dan McGrew
"The Shooting of Dan McGrew" is a narrative poem by Robert W. Service, first published in The Songs of a Sourdough in 1907 in Canada.The tale takes place in a Yukon saloon during the Yukon Gold Rush of the late 1890s...
, Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Green Gables is a bestselling novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908. Set in 1878, it was written as fiction for readers of all ages, but in recent decades has been considered a children's book...
(1997, 1998, 2005), Guys and Dolls (1998, 1999), Oliver!
Oliver!
Oliver! is a British musical, with script, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens....
, Anne Chislett and David Archibald's The Perilous Pirate's Daughter, The Music Man
The Music Man
The Music Man is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments and uniforms to naive townsfolk before skipping town with...
(2004), The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
(2006), Anne and Gilbert (2007) by Nancy White
Nancy White
Nancy White is a Canadian singer-songwriter, whose topical songs were a regular feature on CBC Radio from 1976 to 1994 on the public affairs show Sunday Morning...
, Jeff Hochhauser, and Bob Johnston. This production holds the distinction of being the only Canadian musical given a rave review by Variety Magazine. He also musically directed Glorious!, Les Misérables
Les Misérables (musical)
Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....
(2008), Forever Plaid
Forever Plaid
Forever Plaid is an off-Broadway musical revue written by Stuart Ross in New York in 1990 and now performed internationally. The show is a revue of the close-harmony "guy groups" that reached the height of their popularity during the 1950s. Personifying the clean-cut genre are the Plaids...
, The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Drowsy Chaperone is a musical with book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison. It debuted in 1998 at The Rivoli in Toronto and opened on Broadway on 1 May 2006. The show won the Tony Award for Best Book and Best Score. It started as a spoof of old...
(2009) and Blood Brothers (2010).
He has also directed two highly regarded productions including Forever Plaid
Forever Plaid
Forever Plaid is an off-Broadway musical revue written by Stuart Ross in New York in 1990 and now performed internationally. The show is a revue of the close-harmony "guy groups" that reached the height of their popularity during the 1950s. Personifying the clean-cut genre are the Plaids...
(2009) which was remounted at the Victoria Playhouse, Petrolia, and subsequently at the Mississauga Living Arts Centre near Toronto, Canada and Billy Bishop Goes to War
Billy Bishop Goes to War
Billy Bishop Goes to War is a Canadian musical, written by John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson. One of the most famous and widely-produced plays in Canadian theatre, it dramatizes the life of Canadian World War I fighter pilot Billy Bishop....
(2011) by John Gray, which will be remounted a the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope in 2012.
He has also been associated with Silvermist Productions in Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls is a Canadian city on the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The municipality was incorporated on June 12, 1903...
, working as Musical Director and Music Supervisor for several productions, including Disney's Beauty and the Beast, the Canadian premiere of High School Musical II, and a Geoffrey Whynot's Ebenezer Scrooge: A Carol for Christmas (2009), and he directed a highly acclaimed production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story is based on the "coat of many colors" story of Joseph from the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly...
(2011) starring Jersey Boys
Jersey Boys
Jersey Boys is a jukebox musical with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. It is a documentary-style musical, based on one of the most successful 1960s rock 'n roll groups, the Four Seasons...
star, Adrian Marchuk as Joseph.
Scholarly Work.
He has taught music history, theory, ear training, performance and composition at McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
in Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
, where he organized the Over the Waves international conference on music in/and broadcasting, as well as at the Faculty of Music, Scarborough College, and Knox College at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
, the University of Waterloo
University of Waterloo
The University of Waterloo is a comprehensive public university in the city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The school was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles, and has since grown to an institution of more than 30,000 students, faculty, and staff...
, the University of Western Ontario
University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers of land, with the Thames River cutting through the eastern portion of the main campus. Western administers its programs through 12 different faculties and...
, Wilfrid Laurier University
Wilfrid Laurier University
Wilfrid Laurier University is a university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It also has campuses in Brantford, Ontario, Kitchener, Ontario and Toronto, Ontario and a future proposed campus in Milton, Ontario. It is named in honour of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the seventh Prime Minister of Canada....
, and Lakehead University
Lakehead University
Lakehead University is a public research university in Thunder Bay, and Orillia, Ontario, Canada.Lakehead University, shortened to 'Lakehead U', or 'LU', is non-denominational and provincially supported. It has undergraduate and graduate programs and a medical school.The school has more than 45,000...
in Orillia. He has also taught musical theatre performance at St. Lawrence College
St. Lawrence College
St. Lawrence College is the name of more than one educational institution:* St. Lawrence College, Ontario, in Kingston, Ontario, with satellite campuses in Cornwall and Brockville, Ontario, Canada...
in Brockville.
Thorburn is preparing a volume on Music and Broadcasting for Oxford University Press called Over the Waves with co-editors James Deaville (Carleton) and Christina Baade (McMaster).
Film Music, Television and Radio Credits
He spent several years (1990–93) as composer for CBC-Newsworld (now CBC News Network), composing themes for Ideas on Camera, The Media File, The Medicine File, The Passionate Eye, Vis-A-Vis, and other programs. More recently, he has appeared on In Performance with Eric Friesen, and was musical consultant and researcher for the new CBC2 series Peter The Symphony, hosted by Friesen, with Toronto Symphony Orchestra
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is a Canadian orchestra based in Toronto, Ontario.-History:The TSO was founded in 1922 as the New Symphony Orchestra, and gave its first concert at Massey Hall in April 1923. The orchestra changed its name to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1927. The TSO...
conductor Peter Oundjian
Peter Oundjian
Peter Oundjian is a violinist and conductor, the youngest of five children from an Armenian father and English mother. He also claims Scottish ancestry through his maternal grandfather, a Sanderson, and the MacDonell of Glengarry clan.Oundjian was educated in England, where he began studying the...
.
Church Music.
He has been organist and choir director of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Toronto since 2006, and was also made director of music at Deer Park United Church since 2009. He previously held the same position at Celebration Presbyterian Church on Coldstream Avenue in Toronto. He is a regular lecturer and speaker on music, opera, theatre, and musical theatre, and has been a member of the Canadian Opera Company Speakers Bureau since 1999. He is a lecturer at Knox College, University of Toronto in Music in Christian Spirituality .
He lives in Toronto with his wife, actress Ramona Gilmour-Darling
Ramona Gilmour-Darling
Ramona Gilmour-Darling is a Canadian actor, singer, and dancer. In 2006, she began portraying Loonette the Clown on the Canadian children's television series The Big Comfy Couch, which airs in Canada on Treehouse and on various PBS stations in the United States...
, star of The Big Comfy Couch
The Big Comfy Couch
The Big Comfy Couch is a Canadian children's television series about Loonette the Clown and her doll Molly, who solve everyday problems on their "Big Comfy Couch". It aired from 1992 until early 2006. Re-runs of the show are still being aired on Treehouse TV. It was produced by Cheryl Wagner and...
children's television program, and their son Sasha.