Gareth Owen

Gareth Owen is an eleven time Tony & Olivier Award-winning / nominated sound designer specialising in musical theatre in London's West End, on Broadway and internationally.

Gareth John Owen was born in Sheffield, England, a son of two teachers, both of whom specialised in special needs education.

At the age of nine the family moved to the Cayman Islands where Owen attended Cayman Islands Middle School.

Upon returning to the UK the family moved to St. Ives in Cornwall where Owen attended both Mounts Bay School and Penwith Sixth Form College before going to Plymouth University in Plymouth, to study for a bachelor's degree in underwater science.

While at university he worked in nightclubs as a lighting and sound engineer, and as a boatman and beach lifeguard in St. Ives.

Owen initially began working in live sound when the Penzance nightclub he was working at started to present live bands which Owen was asked to mix.

From here he secured work with Birmingham's SSE Audio Group which lead to an early career in rock & roll, working at festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading, Party in the Park, and T4 on the Beach; and mixing acts such as Def Leppard, The Stereophonics, B B King, The Spice Girls and The Rolling Stones.

Owens theatre career began when he was invited to mix the musical The Blues Brothers which was running at what is now the Trafalgar Studios in Londons west end.

About this time, Owen is quoted as saying in an interview "I didn't have a lot of money so I bought a tent and lived in the band's garden".

From here he was offered a job as sound designer for the UK tour of Stephen Schwartz' musical Godspell, beginning a collaboration which would continue until the present day.

Owen went on to design a number of shows in a freelance capacity, before joining London's Orbital Sound as a full-time sound designer.

He is believed to have designed the show with the largest number of radio mics ever used on a west end musical, 42nd Street at Londons Drury Lane.

He was the first person to use the d&b KSL line array system 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 the Sondheim theater.

Owen was the first person to use a DiGiCo mixing console in theatre, the now defunct D5, for the UK Tour of the Cliff Richard musical Summer Holiday.

He is credited as being the first to use both the Avid Venue mixing console and the Avid S6L mixing console in theatre, for the shows Annie Get Your Gun and Broadways Come 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's Back to the Future musical.

Owen is a co-founder of the software house Show Control Ltd, a company specialising in the coding and development of dedicated theatrical show control systems.

Owen is co-founder and CCO of audio hardware manufacturer Fourier Audio, where he is "working to redefine the future of pro audio".

In 2023, he and his co-founders Henry Harrod and Peter Bridgman sold Fourier Audio to live mixing desk manufacturer DiGiCo for an undisclosed multi-million pound sum.

From this springboard they went on to release the transform.engine, a revolutionary VST plugin host, designed exclusively for the live environment.

In late 2009, Owen left Orbital Sound and formed his own company, Gareth Owen Sound.

In 2009, Owen joined a steering committee that eventually formed the Association of Sound Designers where he served as a committee member for the maximum term of five years, from 2012 to 2018.

In 2022, Owen was presented with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Salford.

Since 2010, Owen has since worked with composers including Alan Menken, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Schwartz, Björn Ulvaeus, Glen Ballard, Max Martin, David Bryan, George Stiles, Cyndi Lauper, Alan Silvestri, Alicia Keys, David Foster, Tom Kitt and Stephen Sondheim.

Owen has also created musicals based on the music of pop icons such as Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, and The Beatles; and is a collaborator with top directors including Robert De Niro, Christopher Ashley, Jerry Zaks, Des McAnuff, Luke Sheppard, Jerry Mitchell, Laurence Connor, Christopher Wheeldon, Terry Johnson, Michael Grief, Emerald Fennell, Scott Schwartz, Michael Arden and Sir Trevor Nunn.

Owen has worked as sound designer on the following Broadway productions in New York City:

Owen has worked as sound designer on the following West End musical productions in London:

Owen has worked as sound designer on the following productions around the world:

Owen has worked as sound designer on the following West End straight plays in London, although the timeline suggests he is no longer active in this particular discipline:

Owen is credited with a long list of technical achievements and industry firsts.

A pioneer in the field of immersive theatre sound, Owen was the first person to use the object based wave field synthesis immersive audio in both Londons West End and on New Yorks Broadway, for the musicals Come from Away and Diana, respectively.

He created the world's first sound design to incorporate object based mixing in to a rotating auditorium for Andrew Lloyd Webbers Cinderella musical at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London; and what was, at the time, the largest SoundScape installation in the world for arena musical Starlight Express.

Owen is also credited as the first person to integrate wireless tracking of performers in to an object based sound system on Broadway, this time for MJ the Musical.

Indeed, he and his team are credited with creating one of the industry standard control applications for live immersive audio, d&b's EnSnap, used on multiple shows and productions around the world.

Owen's use and development of cutting-edge technologies is not limited to immersive audio.