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Executive Office
The common bond between the three members of OIART's executive office
is a lifelong involvement with sound — inventing, shaping,
capturing, composing, producing, engineering, designing it, thinking
about it, and even playing with it. Attendant to this has been the
desire to work with and understand the technology associated with
these arts as well as sharing such knowledge with those aspiring
to working with sound as a way of life.
Paul Steenhuis
President and Founder Paul Steenhuis was born in Margate, United
Kingdom and attended St. Lawrence College, a British public school
in Ramsgate, England, before taking a (diploma) HND in Business
Studies at the London School of Business in London England. In 1975
he came to Canada where he obtained a Teach Master Certificate from
Fanshawe College in London, Ontario in its Music Industry Arts Program.
He was asked to head up the Recording Engineering Department, one
of several departments informing this program, and in this capacity,
from 1976 to 1982, evolved both the conceptual design of the recording
engineering program and oversaw its implementation.
Paul’s experience in the music industry is both extensive
and in depth. He is an accomplished musician, whose prowess on the
guitar, bass and keyboards has garnered him extensive studio experience.
An award-winning composer and arranger,
Paul has numerous jingles, soundtracks, and sound designs/sculptures
to his credit. An expert in electronics, he has been responsible
for the design and modification of analog circuits and the maintenance,
interface and alignment of analog/digital audio equipment. Working
as a freelance engineer, producer, acoustician and maintenance technician,
Paul has designed six studios, recorded and produced over 1,400
recording projects in nine countries in Europe and North America.
Other job credits include:
- Tape op and assistant engineer for one of the most famous
(and the first independent) British recording studios, Lansdowne
Recording Studio, where he worked with such international artists
as Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Yes, Uriah Heap, Renaissance and
Mantovani;
- Studio owner, engineer and producer for Steenhuis Recording
Studios, in Broadstairs England (the first studio Paul designed
and built and one of only three registered BBC studios not on
BBC property). In addition to producing over 300 albums —
mostly folk and rock and roll — Steenhuis Recording Studios
produced and edited five radio series for the BBC as well as
audio product for both BBC and 1TV documentaries and series
.
- Studio Manager, Engineer and Producer for Schilperoort Recording
Studios in Kaag Eiland, Holland, an internationally renowned
sound recording studio specializing in traditional and mainstream
jazz and acoustic music. In addition to working at an administrative
level with personnel and clients, Paul was responsible for the
acoustic design of Schilperoort’s studio rooms (he also
supervised their construction) and the purchase and installation
of recording equipment. As an engineer, he worked with the likes
of Duke Ellington, Teddy Wilson, Billy Butterfield, the Peddlers,
Joe Pass, the Dutch Swing College Band, Bud Freeman and the
Ted Eastman Band and clients such as the North Sea Jazz Festival.
(Incidentally, Paul, whose father was celebrated Dutch jazz
musician Wout Steenhuis, speaks Dutch, German and French.)
Paul has also served as Acoustic Consultant and Designer for Accurate
Sound Productions and Northlake Audio and as adjunct Professor at
the University of Western Ontario, for whose Continuing Education
Program he designed and taught 12 courses in Music Business and
Recording Engineering and for whose School of Journalism he designed
and taught three Engineering and Production courses. He is also
a certified ProTools Trainer.
“At the time I founded OIART back in 1983 it was to address
a definite void existing within academe,” he explains. “The
conventional two or three year audio recording programs available
through community colleges struck me as padded and far too diffuse
to be effective training grounds for audio engineers wishing to
work in the real world. I strongly believed that students would
learn best in an intensive one year program, provided that the curriculum
was meticulously crafted and that there was a very high degree of
course integration. That is what we have managed to achieve at OIART
and a very large factor in our success and the success of our grads.”
Another of OIART’s core strengths, according to Paul, is its
faculty. “Students learn best when they are inspired by enthusiastic
teachers and our faculty is certainly that. They are also dedicated
professionals who really do put our clients — that is to say,
our students — first and foremost.” Although Paul now
confines his teaching activities to guest lectures, he has definite
ideas about what works in the classroom: “You have to excite,
stimulate, inspire and support your students,” he insists.
“In fact, I recommend exhibiting borderline fanaticism on
the subject being presented and striving to infect the student with
the same.”
No stranger to borderline fanaticism, Paul is deeply fascinated
by submarines and speleology — the science of caves. On a
more surface level, he enjoys skiing, hiking, travel, computers
(he’s not kidding about computers) CAD, and, of course, music.
Together with his clincal neuropsychologist wife Runa and a Leonberger
dog named Centa, Paul lives in a beautiful post and beam home in
Gibson’s Landing, a ferry ride away from Vancouver, British
Columbia.
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