Gail Gallagher, Musician
Gail Gallagher is super excited to be providing music for Cinema Centennial again this year! Gail is a singer-songwriter, composer, and music teacher and has developed her improvisational piano skills by being a music director for the Chicago improv scene for nearly 10 years. She has composed music for several musicals including Feathers: A Super Hero Musical which won best underscore in the Premier Premieres festival at MCL in 2017.
During these quran-times she’s been teaching piano and songwriting lessons online and taking on awesome composition clients like Cinema Centennial. She also remotely recorded and released her debut album, Power of the Unnamed Passion which is a musical theatre folk rock concept album about those moments in life where everything falls apart and you learn to make new meaning. All the songs on the album were written pre-pandemic but are wildly relevant to the emotions of the moment, so that’s cool. You can find out more about her work at gailgallaghermusic.com.
Nicholas White, Sound Effects
Nicholas White is a freelance percussionist, historian, and instrument collector. An active performer with professional orchestras all over the U.S. and in Germany, he’s a graduate of Boston University, and holds two advanced degrees in music performance from The Boston Conservatory. He’s attended the Eastern Music Festival and Aspen Music Festival, having performed under such conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Gerard Schwartz, James Gaffigan, Juanjo Mena, David Robertson, Thomas Wood, and Robert Spano.
As a collector, he has assembled the largest collection of drummer’s sound effect instruments (or “traps”) in the world. He has reinvigorated historical interest in this topic through his website, where he displays over two hundred sound effect instruments, and demonstrates each instrument’s original purpose for silent film accompaniment. He’s also been interviewed for DrumHistoryPodcast.com, Newsy news network, and featured at Soho house, Chicago, Percussion Arts Society International Convention (PASIC), Northwestern University, and The Chicago Drum Show. In 2018, White began performing with celebrated silent film organist, Jay Warren. Performing with antique sound effects and genuine original theatre organs, they’ve mastered music accompaniment to silent films in a truly unique and historically accurate fashion. In 2019, White took his sound effect instruments and other percussion to the stage in Regensburg, Germany for the world premier of two new works written by composer/conductor Thomas Wood.