Donald Sosin
Donald Sosin is one of the foremost silent film composers in the world, with 49 years of performing at major film festivals and archives, from MoMA, Lincoln Center, BAM, Telluride, San Francisco and Seattle to Pordenone, Bologna, Berlin, Vienna, Ljubljana, Rijeka, Moscow, Odessa, Bangkok, and Shanghai. He has played at Harvard, Yale, Emory, U. Chicago, U. Michigan, U. Kentucky, U. Wisconsin, Berkeley, Brown, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Swarthmore, Columbia, and other campuses, and lectured on silent film music at the Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies and the University of Michigan.
Donald and his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, often perform together, and lead workshops in silent film music for high school and college students. They have written and recorded songs for many silent films as well as special material for the Chicago Symphony Chorus and other choral groups.
A native of Rye, NY, he studied piano from the age of four and composition in Munich, Ann Arbor and Manhattan. Donald has played in Broadway pits and regional theaters, and has conducted dozens of musicals. Mr. Sosin’s scores accompany silent films on over 60 DVDs on the Criterion Collection, Milestone, Kino, Flicker Alley and several European labels, and on Turner Classic Movies. Selected videography: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Spies, A Story of Floating Weeds, The Ancient Law, Pioneers of African-American Cinema, Women Film Pioneers, Upstream, King of Kings, Filibus, and dozens of shorts by Chaplin, Keaton, Arbuckle, Lloyd, Sennett, Bowers, Linder, Normand. Donald and his family live in northwest Connecticut. He is currently touring with violinist Alicia Svigals, performing their collaborative scores for The Ancient Law and City Without Jews. Website: oldmoviemusic.com
Joanna Seaton
floated into show biz as an Ivory Soap Baby, bobbing in a tub of bubbles with a pink bow in her hair. She modeled toddler clothes for Saks Fifth Avenue, posed in handmade sweaters and perched in handsome baby carriages for magazines and newspapers nationwide. Getting an early lesson in acting, she shed unhappy tears as a “constipated child” for Fletcher’s Castoria. Her family lived in colorful Hell’s Kitchen, within sight of Broadway’s lights, and by the time she appeared in her kindergarten play as the Old Woman in the Shoe, she was truly bound for the footlights. Joanna is a member of Actors Equity and the Screen Actors Guild, and holds a Theatre Arts Degree from Cornell University.
Her acting credits include leading roles in over 80 productions of musicals and plays, in New York and at regional and stock theatres across the country, including the Kennedy Center. Joanna’s Off-Broadway credits include FRANCIS (with Donna Murphy), the American premiere of Cole Porter’s NYMPH ERRANT, the British music hall show GIVE MY REGARDS TO LEICESTER SQUARE at The Village Gate, BOY MEETS BOY at the Actors Playhouse, and THE LITTLE PRINCE at the John Houseman Theatre. Among her Off-off Broadway shows are THE JACK THE RIPPER REVUE at Manhattan Punchline, THE BLITZSTEIN PROJECT for Soho Rep, and EAST OF KANSAS at the Harold Clurman Theatre, where she met her husband, Donald Sosin.
Her favorite regional and stock credits are Anne in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC (with Benay Venuta) and Carrie in CAROUSEL (with David Canary) at the Brunswick Music Theatre, and the cockney Maid in DRACULA (with John Philip Law) at Burt Reynolds’ Jupiter Theatre. Joanna also played leading roles in productions of OKLAHOMA, SHENANDOAH, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, SOUTH PACIFIC, THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE, GODSPELL, THE ODD COUPLE, WAIT UNTIL DARK, and many other shows, including a lavish MIKADO at the World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee.
In 1995-96 Joanna and Donald traveled with the Broadway tour of JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT, starring Sam Harris. They directed over 1000 children in 24 cities, teaching them songs, choreography and acting, and slotting them into the production with the professional actors.
Joanna has twice concertized with jazz great Dick Hyman, at the 92nd Street Y and the Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck, NY. She performed many of the songs he has written for Woody Allen’s films, using squeaky character voices and dialects. As a singer, she has also been heard at Symphony Space’s Wall-to-Wall Richard Rodgers, the St. Regis Hotel, and the Rainbow Room. The New York Times has praised her “silvery soprano.”
Although theatre has been the focus of Joanna’s career, she has also worked in film and television. She created character voices and blood-curdling screams for KOJAK and THE EQUALIZER, and for the film DOGFIGHT. She also spent six unforgettable days at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York, appearing as a reporter in A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN. Joanna’s strangest film experience was running again and again through Columbus Circle at 3 A.M., dodging taxis and pretending to be terrified by the roving ghost in GHOSTBUSTERS.
The trio also recorded a novelty single, MEOWY CHRISMOUSE, which received nationwide radio play, was heard on “All Things Considered” and Peter Schickele’s “Schickele Mix,” and was featured in the comedy magazine “Vanity Furr.”
With her husband Donald Sosin, Joanna has performed at the National Arts Club; their popular evening of Gershwin songs, presented with Gershwin biographer Joan Peyser, prompted a return engagement with an evening of Noel Coward songs.