Scott Lehrer
Sound Designer, Music Producer/Engineer
Scott Lehrer’s work as a sound designer and engineer/producer can be heard in a variety of media, from Broadway plays and musicals to music recordings, TV documentaries, radio dramas, film soundtracks and museum installations.
His recent Broadway sound design work includes The Piano Lesson with Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington, Into the Woods with Sarah Bareilles, The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird (TONY nom), Plaza Suite with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, King Lear starring Glenda Jackson, the revival of Carousel (TONY nom) and Hello Dolly starring Bette Midler. Among his other Broadway work: The Front Page with Nathan Lane, John Slattery and John Goodman, George C. Wolfe’s musical Shuffle Along starring Audra McDonald and Billy Porter and Bartlett Sher’s productions of Fiddler on the Roof and The King and I. He received the first TONY Award for sound as well as the Drama Desk Award for his work on Sher’s 2008 revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theater which also toured in the US, UK and Australia. Other Broadway productions include Honeymoon in Vegas with Tony Danza, A Delicate Balance with Glenn Close and John Lithgow, A Raisin in the Sun with Denzel Washington, Mike Nichols’ productions of Betrayal with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz and Death of a Salesman with Philip Seymour Hoffman (TONY nom) , Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy with Tom Hanks, the musical Chaplin (Drama Desk Award), and the current revival of Chicago (also U.S. tours and London). Also Women on the Verge… and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (TONY nom) both directed by Bartlett Sher, That Championship Season with Brian Cox and Kiefer Sutherland and A View from the Bridge (TONY nom) with Liev Schrieber and Scarlett Johansson, both directed by Gregory Mosher, Finian’s Rainbow, Chita Rivera-The Dancer‘s Life, The Frogs, The Caretaker with Patrick Stewart, the 2002 revival of Frankie and Johnnie in the Claire de Lune with Stanley Tucci and Edie Falco, The Invention of Love, Tallulah starring Kathleen Turner (national tour), James Joyce’s The Dead with Christopher Walken, An American Daughter, Angels in America, The Heidi Chronicles, Once on This Island, My Favorite Year, The Most Happy Fella, A Streetcar Named Desire with Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange, Prelude to a Kiss with Alec Baldwin and Mary Louise Parker, I Hate Hamlet, and Ah, Wilderness.
Off-Broadway and regional work includes his long collaboration with the playwright/director Richard Nelson, designing sound for his celebrated Rhinebeck Panorama which is comprised of the Gabriel, Apple and Michael family plays, his Illyria at the Public Theater, his translation of The Guardsman directed by Gregory Mosher at the Kennedy Center, and Rodney’s Wife, My Life with Albertine and Franny’s Way (Lortel Award) at Playwirghts Horizons. Other regional work includes the McCarter Theatre production of Herringbone starring BD Wong, twenty nine seasons of the City Center’s Encores: Great American Musicals in Concert series; Regina with Patty LuPone and A Streetcar Named Desire with Patricia Clarkson at the Kennedy Center; A Prayer for my Enemy, Assassins, Isn’t It Romantic, Sunday in the Park with George, Falsettoland, Geniuses, and Terra Nova at Playwrights Horizons; Dessa Rose (Lortel/Drama Desk nomination), A Man of No Importance, A Fair Country, Hapgood, and The Substance of Fire at Lincoln Center Theater; Little Fish and Saturday Night at Second Stage Theatre; Our Leading Lady, A Perfect Ganesh, The Last Yankee, and Putting it Together at Manhattan Theatre Club, City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival and Bridgman/Packer’s Bessie Award winning Voyeur.
Scott’s work as a music engineer and producer crosses many genres from contemporary classical music to jazz to singer-songwriters, folk, blues and world music. He engineered Loudon Wainwright’s Grammy-winning High, Wide and Handsome, recorded and produced Last Forever’s Last Forever and Trainfare Home for Nonesuch Records, the Broadway cast recording of An American in Paris (Grammy nom), Celia Berk’s Now That I Have Everything, Manhattan Serenade and You Can’t Rush Spring, Judy Kuhn’s All This Happiness, Bebe Neuwirth’s Porcelain, BD Wong’s performance of the solo musical Herringbone, Criara for Metro Blue/Blue Note, Bach in Brazil for EMI Classics, Geoff Muldaur’s Private Astronomy for EDGE/DG, Meredith Monk’s mercy for ECM, Hazmat Modine’s Bahamut, Extra Deluxe Supreme and Cicada on Barbes, Lucia Pulido’s Por Esos Caminos, Jason Danieley’s Frontier Heroes and Louis Rosen and Capathia Jenkins’ Ache of Possibility and One Ounce of Truth for PS Classics as well as several other releases by Rosen and for dozens for other artists. He worked on many projects with the late film composer Richard Robbins for Merchant Ivory Productions, including Mr. and Mrs. Bridge and The Ballad of the Sad Café and his Point Records CD release, Via Crucis. He has produced six recordings for pianist/composer Paul Sullivan and has served as recording engineer for the theatrical music of Robert Waldman, William Finn, Mark Bennett, John Gromada, Kim Sherman, Ricky Ian Gordon, J. Michael Friedman and many other composers.
Broadcast and corporate media work include designing and mixing documentaries for PBS, The History Channel and other cable networks, recording and mixing radio plays and docs with producer Judith Kampfner for the BBC and doing soundtrack production and system design for Merck, IBM, AT&T, Century 21, AUDI, Xerox and many others. He mixed over fifty films for Philadelphia-based Medical Broadcasting Company, one of the country’s largest producers of media for the health care industry. He also produced several soundtracks for Las Vegas-based Encore Productions shows for IBM including their technology exhibits at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
As a installation audio designer, projects include The Morgan Library and The Brooklyn Navy Yard for the media producers MediaCombo, National Parks Service sites in Calumet Michigan and Cape Lookout NC, The Smithsonian, The Detroit Institute of Arts, Griffith Park Observatory, The Statue of Liberty Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, Grand Rapids Public Museum, Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga, Ben & Jerry’ Museum and the Ellis Island Museum for RBH Multimedia. He collaborated with visionary director/designer Robert Wilson on his production of Hamletmachine in New York and Europe and several installation projects. He also worked with visual artist Ann Hamilton on her installations Corpus at Mass MOCA and The Odyssey at the Cabo Rojo lighthouse in Puerto Rico.
His audio system consultation work includes NYU’s Skirball Center for the Arts, the experimental performance venue Dixon Place, The 52nd Street Project and Dance Theatre Workshop. Other live concert sound system design work has been heard at Central Park’s Summerstage and the New York nightclub SOB’s.
A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Scott was on the faculty of Bennington College from 2002 to 2013, teaching music production and sound design. He has also taught sound design for theatre at Hunter College and NYU.