There is no doubt that John Leonard was pleased to receive the Harold Burris-Meyer Distinguished Career In Sound award — one of the industry’s top honors for sound designers and professionals in theater sound — at the 2016 USITT Expo in Salt Lake City, Yet at the same time, he laughs and points out that “I’m still doing what I’m doing — I’m not dead yet! It’s kind of a lifetime achievement award, but I’m in the middle of working on a show (Hand to God).”
Based in London, yet known for his projects worldwide, this audio pioneer is a member of the Musicians Union, the Association of Sound Designers (U.K.), the Theatrical Sound Designers & Composers Association (U.S.), the Institute of Professional Sound. He is also a DPA Microphone Master.
This latest accolade, the Burris-Meyer Distinguished Career award, will be added to the many others Leonard has accumulated during his distinguished career. He’s received an honorary fellowship from The Guildhall School of Music & Drama; a Drama Desk award; and a Sound Designer of the Year award. In 2002, he was invited to join the Broadway Entertainment Technicians Union, IATSE Local 1 — an honor rarely bestowed to someone other than an American. He’s in his fourth decade in a theater career that is still going strong. In addition to his many articles, he and is the author Theatre Sound, a textbook for those entering the field.
Leonard’s approach to his work is as varied as the shows he’s worked on (Into the Woods, A View from the Bridge, Much Ado About Nothing; and several that went to Broadway including Nicholas Nickleby, Much Ado About Nothing, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses). “It depends on the show, the director, the theater… and how much money I’m getting paid,” he laughs. Leonard gets a wide variety of work, and he treats each project as they come in with a new eye — and ear. “You’re never too old to learn from somebody with different ideas and experiences. Sometimes the idea is silly, and you have to talk it through with them until they see that it’s a silly idea; sometimes you just have to make it work.”
Understanding is important, too. “I like to know the people I’m working with and talk to them about the work I’m doing — that I’m not just some guy making silly noises,” he says. “There’s no point to any of this if there is no collaboration.”
The Early Days
Leonard is from Bristol, U.K., and in 1971, joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company as a stage technician, moving to the sound department the following year. At that time, the Bristol Old Vic was running three theaters and Leonard provided sound for them all, including The Theatre Royal — the oldest theater in Europe, built in 1766. Here, he introduced the use of stereophonic sound effects and surround-sound — years before they became commonplace. He co-designed the Libra Theatre Sound Desk, which won him the ABTT Product Of The Year Award in 1979.
In 1984, he became head of sound of The Royal Shakespeare Company. There, he developed one of the first computer-assisted theater sound systems for the company’s Pit Theatre at The Barbican Centre. In 1985, he initiated a concept design study for a digitally controlled assignable theater sound console. Later that decade he formed Aura Sound, a partnership with other sound designers. With Aura, he designed sound systems for The Almeida Theatre and all of its temporary homes. He also dabbled further in installation work, applying his skill set to three Madame Tussauds’ museums: Warwick Castle, Amsterdam and New York. With fellow sound designer John Owens, Leonard created the audio for the Millennium Mystery Palace in York Minster Cathedral, which he says was one of the most technically challenging projects in his career. He’s also produced several sound effects libraries, some of which are available online (see sidebar).
The Leonard Approach
While installations, lectures and writing keeps him busy, Leonard always returns to the theater. “I don’t have a set approach to a show,” he says. He goes in with a clean slate — nothing preconceived — and “finds what is helpful and add to the production. I want people to appreciate the production. I never want to hear, ‘it was a bad show, but great sound design.’ It must be a collaboration.” And he’s worked with some of the most sought-after directors of the boards including Richard Eyre, John Caird, Trevor Nunn, Kathy Burke, Michael Attenborough, and Mike Leigh — among many others.
“It’s a very different world,” he says, reflecting on the changes since he first got into theater sound. “I started in the theater pits working with very primitive equipment. Now everyone has a digital audio workstation on their laptop, and the sound desks are getting smaller.” With technology constantly changing, he spends more time staying up on new equipment and reading manuals. “Directors expect things to happen instantly, and that is possible because you carry sound effects on a hard drive and you don’t have to go back to a studio to mix something.”
Another change over the years is what is, and isn’t, being heard in the theaters these days. He laments that actors seem to be less classically trained, and thus not as skilled at projecting from the stage as previous generations. “It’s not about being loud, but knowing how to make your voice fill up a big stage — that seems to be getting lost. And it seems like kids are growing up increasingly hearing impaired, and that’s a trend I’m worried about.”
He is concerned about those coming out of theater schools with degrees but no experience in the real world. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” he says. “I’m not saying there shouldn’t be degrees, of course, but there’s a lack of basic knowledge that I find disturbing. They know how the latest digital equipment works, but not what to do with it.”
Leonard knows how it works and what to do with it. “I love technology — I love having my sound effects module in my backpack. Yet, I don’t think anybody other than other sound designers know exactly what we do,” he says. “It’s a complicated chain, getting audio and sound effects through cables and out of speakers.”
Coming Attractions
His visit to Salt Lake to receive the Harold Burris-Meyer Distinguished Career In Sound award briefly interrupted his design work on Long Day’s Journey Into Night just as rehearsals were getting underway. This production of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterpiece (which wrapped up in late April) was directed by Richard Eyre and starred Jeremy Irons. The revival was put on by the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Royal as part of the 250-year anniversary of this longest continuously running theater in the U.K., which recently completed an $18.1 million redevelopment project. And any shows he does at The Bristol have a special significance for Leonard, who notes that it’s “where I first worked as a sound designer in 1972.”
Looking forward, there’s no time for rest. So far, in 2016, he completed sound design for the world premiere of Lawrence After Arabia at the Hampstead Theatre in London and another world premiere —We Wait in Joyful Hope, presented at London’s Theatre 503. Next on Leonard’s agenda is the sound design for Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, which opens on June 18 and runs through October 1, 2016.
Capturing Effects
The distinctive sound of the purring engine of a vintage Ariel Square Four motorcycle sounds nothing like a Norton 750 — or a Harley-Davidson Sportster, for that matter. One of the key elements in theatrical sound design is finding and/or creating sound effects, and sometimes, uncovering just the right effect requires a substantial amount of research — and occasionally field recording.
John Leonard holds one of the largest collections of commercial sound effect libraries in private hands in the U.K. Coupled with the latest version of the Soundminer audio file management system, he can lay his hands on almost any sound effect that might be called for. In addition, Leonard has been recording his own effects for many years and has amassed an eclectic library of sounds that can be heard in many theater, television and film productions worldwide. Many of his recordings are now incorporated into various sound effects libraries, and more continue to be added on a regular basis, with many available online.
In recent years, John has been recording almost exclusively in B-Format: a recording system that allows post processing of the results into almost any surround playback format as well as stereo and mono. Unlike many other recording systems that use multiple microphones to produce 5.1 or 7.1 recordings, a B-Format compatible microphone utilizes a near-coincident tetrahedral array of microphone capsules to capture a complete soundfield, including height information, and this can be processed after the recording has been made. The equipment and technology for this type of recording has been around for many years, and is largely based on the innovative work by the late Michael Gerzon and Peter Fellgett. This culminated in the development of the SoundField Microphone, currently being made and distributed by SoundField Technologies (www.soundfield.com).
Leonard was an early proponent of this type of recording and playback system for theater and pushed hard for a way for it to be used easily in theater productions. However, it was not until 25 years after he wrote his initial memo to The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979 that fully portable equipment to enable remote location recordings became widely available.
He acquired one of the first portable SoundField microphones, the ST250, and used it in stereo mode to capture many of the recordings that now comprise his effects collection. Then, in 1999, Leonard visited the headquarters of audio manufacturer Metric Halo (www.mhlabs.com) and discussions turned to a high-quality portable interface that could be used with a laptop computer as a multi-track location recorder.
Leonard was also one of the first purchasers of the Metric Halo Mobile 2882 +DSP I/O; the first of the portable FireWire-based recording interfaces. His first recordings using the system to capture a Cessna airplane produced frighteningly realistic results and formed the beginnings of a scheme to record all future effects in B-Format for eventual release in the surround format of choice. With his SoundField mic, Metric Halo interface and a variety of Apple PowerBook computers, Leonard has made recordings of planes at air shows, steam trains, motorboats and other modes of transport, traveling to remote islands, deserted castles and other locales to expand his library. Most recently he has added a Sound Devices 788T SSD 8-track portable recorder. This joins his three surround microphones, Len Moskowitz’s Core Sound TetraMic, the SoundField ST450 a DPA Microphones 5100 and Sony, Shure, Sennheiser and Schoeps Mid-Side mic set-ups. With this arsenal of gear, he can handle even the most remote and difficult recording situations with ease. Many of Leonard’s sound effects (though not all) are offered online at www.asoundeffect.com.
—George Petersen
For more info about John Leonard, visit www.johnleonard.co.uk.
