Ottawa born Lora Bidner combines her background as a singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist as well as affinity for folklore in her music for the screen, which includes the BBC/Family Channel series Malory Towers, mini series Hogtown, feature thriller Don’t Click, and Family Channel series Ruby and the Well, which she co-composes with Rob Carli.  The four-time SOCAN Foundation winner completed a Bachelors of Music from Carlton and a Masters of Music Technology from the University of Toronto, and is an artist in her own right, who released the critically acclaimed To The North in 2015 and is currently working on a new album.

We talk about how she got her start singing and writing songs, the surprising film score touchstone that we both share as a favorite, the demanding high school program that got her started writing music early, and the winding educational journey where she overcame tremendous obstacles toward a career as a  singer-songwriter.  In the end, she returned to her first passion - scoring for film and TV.  Since then, Lora graduated from the Canadian Film Center’s Slaight Family Music Lab, where her formidable work ethic helped her meet the intense challenges of that program, preparing her for the real life pressures of being a screen composer.  We talk about the joys and struggles of her recent projects, how she manages the interpersonal aspect, and how folk music and her voice become part of her scores.  Lora’s new challenge is as a new parent, where she juggles the demands of motherhood with a busy scoring career.  She offers valuable perspective for anyone who is thinking about, or living, in that tricky balance.

www.lorabidner.com

Originally from the Netherlands, Lodewijk Vos’ approach to music making is very much his own.  One half of the scoring duo Menalon (with Joseph Murray), the Canadian Film Center grad has worked on TV shows such as Diggstown on CBC, documentaries including HBO’s The Slow Hustle and Mr. Tachyon for VICE TV, and films like Level 16 and The Void.  We talk about the wild new instrument/effects box he’s building, his roots playing rock in the Netherlands (but being more interested in the effects pedals than the guitar), starting as an in-house composer for MTV, his move to Toronto and the differences between European and Canadian mindsets, the power of working away from a computer screen, his world-traveling, site-specific modular synth explorations, committing completely but then throwing out film scoring concepts and hours of work, the power of documentaries, dealing with anxiety and fear, rejecting hustle culture, his meditation practice, and sound as healing.

www.lovosmusic.com

Neil Parfitt’s wonderfully diverse career sees him working at the highest levels as a composer for animated series, as well as designing custom synth sounds for some of the biggest blockbusters on the planet.  He started out as a kid who was equally fascinated by how music was produced as he was with the technology that was used in the process.  Neil began his scoring journey in anime, with titles like Bakugan Battle Brawlers, and Beyblade.  This multiple Canadian Screen Award nominee is now known for his music on series such as Ranger Rob, The Remarkable Mr. King, and Bravest Warriors, where he writes everything from Golden Age orchestral film music, to 80’s cheese, to chiptunes. We talk about his early days figuring out how things worked by dismantling them, getting his start in Toronto as a dialogue editor, and how dogged persistence led to his entry into animation with Nelvana, working with Japanese creators on anime shows and adapting to musical cultural differences, a terrifying surprise meeting while he was on vacation, the joys and challenges of working on animated series, where you have to “turn on a dime  [and produce] a million different cues”, becoming an accidental Youtuber, and being terrible at self-promotion.

Heads up - this episode does contain a bit more strong language than usual.

www.neilparfitt.com