Michael John McCarthy
Michael John McCarthy (Music and Co-Sound Designer) is a Cork-born, Glasgow-based composer, musician and sound designer. Work for performance includes: The Cheviot, The Stag & The Black, Black Oil, The BFG, and Steel Magnolias (Dundee Rep); Light Boxes, Letters Home, and The Authorised Kate Bane (Grid Iron); Into That Darkness, Fever Dream: Southside and Sports Day (Citizens Theatre); In Time O’ Strife, Blabbermouth, The Tin Forest and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (National Theatre of Scotland); A Gamblers Guide to Dying (Gary McNair/Show & Tell); Right Now (Traverse Theatre), Bondagers (Royal Lyceum Edinburgh), Under Milk Wood (Tron Theatre Glasgow), Glory (Janice Parker Projects), Educating Ronnie (Utter). Other companies he has worked with include The Arches, Lung Ha’s, macrobert, Platform, People’s Light & Theatre Philadelphia, Playgroup, Poorboy, Theatre Uncut, Vox Motus and Youth Music Theatre UK. He has twice been nominated for the Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland in the category Best Use of Music and Sound. Michael John’s primary instruments are guitar and piano accordion. He has toured Europe and Japan with Zoey Van Goey, Lord Cut-Glass, and Aidan Moffat. He appears as an accordionist on albums by Alasdair Roberts, RM Hubbert, Niall Connolly, Trembling Bells and Bonnie Prince Billy, amongst others. He has also composed and recorded several series’ worth of radio music for the BBC. He is lead artist on Turntable.
