Jon Gilbert Leavitt is a songwriter, keyboardist, piano performer, producer and arranger who has played, recorded and performed on three continents. Primarily he produces, arranges, composes and designs sound under his company JGLsongs LLC.
Jon has arranged and performed music featured in the documentary My Dinner With Abbie (1991) with the late activist Abbie Hoffman, featured at the Berlin and L.A. Film Festivals, and aired on PBS television; he has scored promotional videos German High (2004), Guys and Goals (2005) and For Butter or Wurst (2006) and Eurokids (2007), produced by Marcus Sporkmann/Takewest Medienproduktion and the Goethe-Institut.
Jon is also the composer of music for the (Fall 2008) off-off Broadway production Oh, Those Beautiful Weimar Girls through the New Stage Theatre Company (New York), is currently working on music for visual artists Jonathan Wagner, an upcoming installation by MOMA multimedia artist Yevgeniy Rohklin as well as through __Ist Artist Resource Group, based in New York. Additional projects include documentary films by NY/Brazil-based TRIA Productions (Paritins- Beauty, Culture, Magic and Happiness).
He produced the music for the 50th Steuben Parade through the German National Tourist Office (Sept. 2007) in New York and featured on New York and German television.
His single Pride and its three re-mixes received worldwide airplay, print mentions and garnered radio interviews. It was named #1 Song of the Year 2000 on the Outvoice™ Top-40 Tracks Chart, and was named by "Queer Vinyl" on KPFK Los Angeles as one of the ten queer songs that "shaped our musical history." His single Proud and Free, recorded by Deian McBryde, was featured during the 25th anniversary of the creation of the rainbow flag in 2004.
On radio, Jon has been featured in This Way Out (radio newsmagazine), the nationally-syndicated Joey Reynolds Show, as well as interviewed on numerous radio programs in the U.S. and Europe. In print, Jon's been featured in Billboard, numerous local, regional and national publications, as well as in Ed Karvoski, Jr.'s 2002 book Award Winning Men.
Jon is a full writer member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), in which he received six ASCAPlu$™ awards. He is a member of Outmusic™, in which he won 'Outstanding Songwriter' and was nominated for 'Outmusician Of The Year' in the first annual Outmusic (OMA) Awards, 2001, was a 2004 OMA nominee for Out Song (Proud and Free) and the Stonewall Society Pride Award recipient in 2002.
Currently, Jon (as JGLsongs, LLC) is producing independent artists on upcoming releases, as well as an EP entitled pridetwothousandnine, which will feature a revamped and updated version Pride as well as approximately six or seven additional songs - and - a stage musical.
Apart from music, Jon also is a ravenous photographer who has close to 4,000 images online with many published on various websites as well as in print publications. His recent book of photos entitled bigcitylife is available through Blurb.com.
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JGLsongsuses
•Apple iMac
•Apple Power Mac Book
•M-Audio Keystation
•M-Audio Firewire Solo
•Apple Logic Pro Studio 8 (professionally trained in Apple Logic Pro Basic and Advanced Logic Pro through Mac Audio Trainers)
•ZOOM (Samson) HD8 Hard Disk Recording Studio
•Korg Triton Workstation 88
•Space Designer; EXS24; Sculpture; Ultrabeat; Native Instruments (Kontakt, Absynth, Kore, etc.); iDrum; Crystal; Remedy; TruePianos, etc.
•other instruments/equipment may be available upon request
JGLsongsclients+collaborators ARTIST clients include
•Eurokids - Life Under the Stars (2007)
•Euro-jeunesse- sous les étoiles (2007)
•For Butter or Wurst (2006)
•Guys and Goals (2005)
•German High (2004)
•My Dinner with Abbie (1991)
Whether it's a
demo or release,
an idea or complete song,
JGLsongs LLC can take your project to the next level.
