Jack Lenz

Jack Lenz is a Canadian composer. He has written, performed, and produced music for film, television, and theatre,^[1] along with working on non-soundtrack album ventures.^[2][3] He is also the founder of Live Unity Enterprises, an organization devoted to the production of music for the Bahá'í community, and dramatic and musical resources to help promote its teachings.^[4] For example, Lenz wrote the music for the Expectation opening music for the second Bahá'í World Congress in 1992 with an audience of tens of thousands of Bahá'ís from around the world.^[5]

Lenz became well known in the United States after working on the score for Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. Among his current projects is working on a movie about the persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran, particularly the story of Mona Mahmudnizhad who suffered under the persecution in Iran,^[6] under the title of Mona's Dream.^[7][8]

Background

Lenz was born in Eston, Saskatchewan. His mother was also raised in Saskatchewan, and his father came to Canada from Hungary during the Depression. Still in his youth Lenz took piano lessons from Garth Beckett and later studied composition at the University of Saskatchewan.^[9] Lenz became a professional musician when he played keyboards and flute for the soft-rock bands Seals and Crofts and Loggins and Messina touring around the world, performing before large audiences, and recording.^[10] Lenz' involvement in children's issues stems partly from having seven children of his own, as well as being an arena which avoids "the conflict between what I believe about music and its sacred nature and dealing with what a lot of programming deals with, which sometimes could be the worst aspects of human nature."^[9] Lenz joined the Bahá'í Faith in 1969.^[10]

Programs

Lenz has done music production work for over 100 programs for various categories of mass media including television series and information/news programming, feature films, movies of the week, documentaries, live to broadcast, and children's television productions for networks like the CBC, NBC, Nickelodeon, PAX TV, Discovery Channel, Scholastic-HBO, Showtime, and Nelvana / CBS (as well as theatrical works).^{[11][12][13][14]}

• Little Mosque on the Prairie (2007)
• "Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye" (12 episodes, 2003–2005)
• The Passion of the Christ (2004)
• Goosebumps
• Due South (all series)
• RoboCop: The Series
• 13 years of the Hospital for Sick Children's Telethon ^[14]
• 7 years of YTV's Youth Achievement Awards^[14]
• musical direction of A tribute to renowned author, Mordecai Richler^[14]
• more than twenty separate television productions back to 1983.
• Doc, a small town Montana pysician, Dr. Clint Cassidy, who moves to the Big Apple in a Toronto based series starring Billy Ray Cyrus. Excellent family oriented drama in a contemporary style of the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.
• Atomic Betty
• Nanalan'

Awards

Nominated for several Gemini Awards:

• Best Original Music Score for a Series for:Due South, episode "Free Willie". (1995)
• Best Original Music Score for a Dramatic Series for: "Due South", episode "The Gift of the Wheelman". (1996)
• Best Pre-School Program or Series for: Nanalan' (2003) (Executive Producer and Music Director)

Winner of several SOCAN Awards:

• 14th Annual SOCAN Awards 2003^[15]
  • Domestic Non-Animated Television Series Music Award
  • International Television Series Music Award
  • News & Sports Television Programming Music Award
• 16th Annual SOCAN Awards 2005^[16]
  • Domestic Non-Animated Television Series Music Award

Albums or songs on albums

• Andrea by Andrea Bocelli (2004) (Go Where Love Goes)^[3]
• Musical Director of the Inauguration of the Bahá'í Terraces on Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, (2001)^[10]
• Music from the Second Bahá'í World Congress (1992, released 1994) (4 of 16 songs), commissioned by the Universal House of Justice^[5]
  • Expectation^[5] (words from the scriptures of Zoroaster, Moses, Isaiah, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad. Music by Jack Lenz)
  • See the Light^[17]
  • Glad Tidings
  • Garden of Ridván.
• Jewel in the Lotus (1987) ^[18] (4 of 10 songs)
• We Are Baha'is (1982)^[19]
• Lenz also produced an 6 hr talk on Music and The Arts - The Oneness of Humankind, a spiritual journey explaining the origin of the various art forms and its important necessity in our lives.^[20]
• Lenz performed flute on 1977's Loggins and Messina Finale (album).
• Lenz, with Tony Kosinec, Alan Smith and Pat Arbour, wrote the Toronto Blue Jays "OK Blue Jays" song,^[21] which has become the Jays anthem, and is sung during the seventh-inning stretch at the Rogers Centre.

Artists

Lenz has done production work for various artists including Ravi Shankar, Paul Gross, David Keeley, Doug Cameron, as well as Adam Crossley, Holly Stell, The Crawling Kingsnakes and Ava Bowers.^[2][22][23]

References

External links

• Official website
• Jack Lenz at the Internet Movie Database
• Millennnium Arts Society - Jack Lenz in conversation with Joseph Lerner
• Mona's Dream