Current & recent work

Current projects in 2024 are Piaf for Bristol School of Acting at the Bristol Old Vic, working as MD with director Stuart Wood, and Nan Shepherd, Naked & Unashamed for Firebrand Theatre in collaboration with PFT.

In November 2023 Jon was musical director for Into the Woods at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, working alongside director Atri Banerjee and designer Ken Harrison. It was a welcome revisit to a Sondheim piece which he first MD-ed in 2001 at the newly remodelled Byre Theatre in St Andrews with director Ken Alexander.

September 2023 saw the culmination of another autumn spectacular at The Enchanted Forest, a large son et lumière promenade production set in Perthshire’s Faskally Wood. Jon was a co-composer again, working with Wavemakers Live to produce this year’s show From the Deep, which was created in collaboration with co-composer Rachel Cullen and director Karen Falconer, with lighting by Grant Anderson and animation from Bright Side Studios.

In February 2023 Jon was sound designer for The Man in the Submarine [Y Dyn yn y Llong Danfor], a new play by Laila Noble which won the inaugural St Andrews Playwrighting Competition and premièred at the Byre Theatre in a collaboration with Perth Theatre. Jon worked with co-directors Lu Kemp & Chris Stuart Wilson to conjure an underwater world, complete with surreal fish and malfunctioning radio telecommunications, in an affecting exploration of dementia.

There was a welcome return post-pandemic of The Enchanted Forest in September 2022 with it’s 20th anniversary show Together, which ran nightly until the end of October. Jon has contributed music for the event since 2013 with co-composers Rachel Cullen and RJ McConnell.

The event attracts over 80,000 visitors annually over a 4-week run, and has won many cultural and tourism awards. For Together, Jon and Rachel worked closely with creatives Ian Greenhill & Rux Dragan at Studio Something and with event company Wavemakers Live, as well as specialist audio services company DM Audio.

Jon returned to Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum in June 2022 as pianist and musical director for a run of Tom McGrath’s Laurel & Hardy, a re-mounting of the hugely popular production from 17 years ago, which also toured to Dublin’s Olympia Theatre.

In education, Jon continues as an occasional visiting lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a peripatetic teacher of piano & theory at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh.

He is also continuing with several theatre projects in development: Awaken by Cheryl Price with producer Ellie Zeegen; a re-working of Face by Peter Arnott, with director Ken Alexander and actor Janette Foggo; and a new musical version of the Bette Davis film Now, Voyager by Ian Hammond Brown & Suzanne Lofthus with Clare Prenton, Becky Minto and Cutting Edge Theatre.  

September 2021 saw a re-mount of Tom McGovern’s one-man show The Signalman for Perth Theatre. Written by Peter Arnott for A Play, A Pie & A Pint and the Traverse, it garnered three awards in the 2020 Critics’ Awards: for Best Production, Best New Play and Best Male Performance.  It subsequently also toured to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.

[click ► here to listen to some of the music]

Created in June 2021, Journal of a Plague Year was an online geo-located adaptation of Defoe’s novel. Set in Edinburgh’s Old Town, this audio version was made by students of Edinburgh College directed by Clara Bloomfield and Ashling Findlay-Carroll, with a continuous underscore written and recorded by Jon.

Jon’s previous projects back in 2019 included the sound design for a new biographical play about the rugby commentator Bill McLaren for Firebrand Theatre at Heart of Hawick; a new score for Stuart Paterson’s Cinderella in a production with the third-year and musical theatre students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; and concert accompanist for the Edinburgh Gay Men’s Chorus.

He was the musical supervisor for the season’s musical Chicago, which overtook his 2011 production of My Fair Lady to become the theatre’s best-selling show ever.  In the autumn he returned to The Enchanted Forest for its 2018 show, Of the Wild.

About

Based in Edinburgh since 1992, Jon has worked primarily in theatre on over 200 productions throughout Scotland and beyond.  He has an eclectic range as both composer and arranger, and has worked in a wide variety of musical genres, especially within musical theatre.

Since his first commission by 7:84 of a new score for The Grapes of Wrath in 1994, Jon has written music for many companies, including the National Theatre of Scotland, the Abbey, Dublin, the Traverse, Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, Dundee Rep, Citizens Theatre Glasgow, Nottingham Playhouse, the Byre St Andrews, and Firebrand Theatre, as well as for UK tours of The 39 Steps, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Time and the Conways.

He has written music for numerous premieres by writers including David Greig (Damascus, The Speculator), Jules Horne (Gorgeous Avatar), Justin Young (In My Father’s Words) and Catherine Czerkawska (Wormwood).

In musical theatre he has worked in many roles on all scales of production, from a 2-keyboard version of Richard Taylor's score for Whistle Down the Wind, to full-scale UK tours including Dundee Rep's Sunshine on Leith as assistant to MD Hilary Brooks.

Jon helped inaugurate the musical theatre strand at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and for 10 years arranged and supervised productions in its renowned repertory season, with both actor-musicians and dedicated bands. Chicago, in 2018, became the best-selling show in the theatre’s history.

Jon also works with youth theatres, drama schools, community-based and amateur companies. He enjoys co-devising theatre work beyond established text-based pieces, and working with all actors of all musical ability.

Directors

Jon has worked for a variety of different theatres and producers with many directors and co-directors, including:

Other collaborations

In 2013 Jon was invited to join the creative team behind The Enchanted Forest, the award-winning autumn son et lumière show in Perthshire, co-composing the music and sound with RJ McConnell and also, subsequently, Rachel Cullen.

With Hilary Brooks he has been associate and assistant musical director on shows including Dundee Rep's productions of Sweeney Todd and Sunshine on Leith, and a re-mount of Glasgow Girls at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre.

Jon first worked professionally in theatre alongside members of the Cauld Blast Orchestra (formed in 1989 for the Communicado show Jock Tamson's Bairns), including Anne Wood, Iain Johnstone, Steve Kettley & Mike Travis, playing with the latter in his bands EH15 and Uncharted Territory.

Outwith theatre, other collaborations include performing and recording with The Pearlfishers' David Scott, Carol Laula, and Wendy Weatherby amongst many others.

Awards

In the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland which have been held since 2004, Jon has been personally nominated four times in the category Best Use of Music and Sound, has won with Best Ensemble and Best Production for A Christmas Carol with the National Theatre of Scotland, and has seen 35 nominations or awards over all categories for shows he has been involved with.

In 2020 The Signalman won three out of its four nominations: for Best Production, Best New Play and Best Male Performance.

Dundee Rep's productions of Sunshine on Leith and Sweeney Todd won the TMA award for Best Musical in 2007 and 2010 respectively.

Jon studied music at the University of Reading where he was awarded the Peter Wishart Prize, and went on to receive an M.Mus in Theory and Analysis, studying with Jonathan Dunsby.

He was awarded a music scholarship to Ipswich School where he was also the inaugural Burton Scholar.

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