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Steve Brown

steve-brown2It is with great sorrow that in 2013 we announced the death of Steve Brown, the Head of the Sound working group for OISTAT, Board Member, and one of the founders of, the Association of Sound Designers and Sound Curator and Organiser of World Stage Design 2013.

That he had been ill for 6 months did not stop Steve working on WSD2013 from his bed to try and maintain the creative drive he has become renowned for internationally over the last 13 years.

We first met Steve on a Friday Night in a Bar in Prague in February 2005 at a Scenofest planning meeting and so began a dynamic creative friendship.

His championing of the role of sound within the creative team in performance design was entirely persuasive if sometimes abrasive, a champion for the art of Sound Design and Sonic Art.

We created a unique Scenofest in 2007 with an extraordinary array of experiences, in 2011 he was so delighted to be asked to curate for the main Prague Quadrennial and equally was always going to at the foremost of the planning of WSD2013.

All of that is taken for granted; his CV and biography  (Below) stand as testament to his achievements.

What we remember most clearly is laughing with him until it hurt.  We remember evenings spent talking about everything else apart from work and evenings spent talking about nothing but work, all with equal passion and joy.

We remember that he only used to drink a pint and half to our three; we remember his absolute love of football and most of all Tottenham Hotspurs and we remember his joyously mischevious sense of humour.

An enormous part of our creative life has been taken away, and also a dear friend.

Sean Crowley Project Leader WSD2013

Ian Evans Technical Director WSD2013

Steve Brown – Biography

Steven is a multi-award-winning sound designer with more than 85 sound design credits as Head of Sound with the Royal Exchange Theatre Company, Manchester, including World and European premieres, tour and productions which have transferred to the West End.

Theatre includes: Moon on a Rainbow Shawl; Leave Taking; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (redesign)(National Theatre); Richard III; Gloriana’s Garden; The Blue Angel; Measure for Measure; The Taming of the Shrew; Romeo and Juliet (Royal Shakespeare Company); Madre Coraggio e I suoi figli by Bertolt Brecht (Teatro Strehler, Piccolo Teatro di Milano); Nathan the Wise; Turandot (Hampstead Theatre).

Sound engineering includes: Sweeney Todd; Arcadia; Wind in the Willows (National Theatre); Macbeth; A Midsummer Night’s Dream;The Beaux Stratagem (Royal Shakespeare Company).

Commissions include: The Listening Shell; sound design curator and exhibit designer for Collaborators: UK Design for Performance (Victoria & Albert Museum); Why Won’t You Tell Me? (Steam Control / The X Festival / British Film Institute National Film Theatre / Sassoon/Saatchi Gallery); a pan-continent collaborative soundscore for International Radiophonic Creation Day; soundscape for Laban Dance Centre; sound works composition/installation for Exeter Cathederal.

Curations include: World Stage Design 2013; The Prague Quadrennial 2011; Scenofest at the Prague Quadrennial 2007.

Steven’s soundscape and audio ecology work has been exhibited across the world, most recently at The Sonar Festival, Barcelona, Oxford Brookes University, Centre for Contemporary Art in Almere (Netherlands) and The Future Everything Festival, Manchester. His recent work has been broadcast on internet and terrestrial radio stations including Resonance FM (London), Radio Zero (Lisbon) and Free103point9 (New York).

http://www.listenhear.co.uk