Justin Ellington is a composer, arranger, music director, producer, educator, sound designer, and musician, who works in theater, film and the record industry, embracing jazz, classical, blues, world, and contemporary musical styles.
His Broadway credits include Proof, Othello, Our Town, and this season's Joe Turner's Come And Gone, for which he received his third Tony Award nomination (the first two were for Jaya's African Hair Braiding and for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf).
As composer and sound designer, he has worked with Lincoln Center Theater, The Guthrie, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Goodman Theater, The Kennedy Center, Theater For A New Audience, New York Theater Workshop, The Public Theater, Williamstown Theater, New York Stage and Film, Actors Theater of Louisville, Children’s Theater Company, and Royal Shakespeare Company, among others.
He is a proud member of the American Society of Composer and Publishers, United Scenic Artist Local 829, Bangladesh Music Group and Kobalt Music Group.
Justin Ellington speaks with Live Design about his Tony-nominated lighting this season:
Production: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson, directed by Debbie Allen
Dates: March 30 – July 26, 2026, Barrymore Theatre
Collaborators:
David Gallo, Scenic Design
Paul Tazewell, Costume Design
Stacey Derosier, Lighting Design
Steve Bargonetti, Original Music
Live Design: The quality of the sound – what did you want the audience to hear?
Justin Ellington: I wanted the audience to hear the words of the play and, ideally, not feel as though they were coming from speakers. My goal is always for the technology to disappear. I want the audience to experience what the characters in that Pittsburgh boarding house in 1911 would be experiencing: sitting at a table when a train passes by, or hearing the sounds of industry enter the home when someone opens a door to the outside.
The house itself is a character in the play. Part of the role of this particular home is, as Seth says, to be “a respectable house.” That led me to ask: What does it mean to be inside this house versus outside it? And what story can emerge from that contrast?
LD: Architecture of the rig – what did you use, and where did you place it?
JE: We used a d&b audiotechnik system throughout the production. Because the play is set in Pittsburgh in 1911, at a time when the steel industry was rapidly expanding and already deeply embedded in daily life, a significant part of my work involved creating that environment onstage.
To accomplish this, we strategically placed speakers overhead, in the wings on both stage left and stage right, and far upstage. This gave us the flexibility to move sound throughout the world of the play and create a living environment around the actors.
I also used some speakers for fold back because we had a guitarist and singer in the show. Those speakers were also important for our underscore moments because I wanted the actor to be “in it.“
For the house system, we kept things relatively simple. We used left and right mains for the orchestra level, along with fill speakers for seating areas outside the primary coverage of those mains. Similar fill systems were used for the mezzanine and balcony.
We also deployed center speakers for both the orchestra and mezzanine levels, along with center balcony delay/fill speakers. The actors’ voices were primarily reproduced through those center speakers, with some support from the left and right mains depending on where performers were positioned onstage at any given moment.
In addition, I made use of surround speakers located on the sides and rear of the theatre. I was careful not to drive the surround system too aggressively, reserving it for moments when we wanted to fully immerse the audience in the soundscape.
LD: What rental shop did you choose, and what piece of gear was non-negotiable?
JE: The show was built at Masque Sound. For this production, the d&b DS100 was non-negotiable. From the beginning, I knew I wanted transparency and the ability to utilize vocal delay zones to achieve it.
There are other tools capable of accomplishing similar results, such as L-Acoustics L-ISA system, which I am also a fan of. However, working with Nathan Rubio, who is exceptionally skilled at DS100 programming, made the choice an easy one.
LD: Who was on your sound crew?
Shaughn Bryant, Production Audio
Nathan Rubio, Associate Sound Designer
German Martinez, Pre-Production Assistant
Nate Dickson, A1Chon Calvin, A2
LD: What makes the sound for this production so successful for you?
JE: What makes the sound successful in this production is the collaboration among all of the design departments and the actors. Because of that collaboration, nothing feels out of place or draws attention to itself as an obvious sound cue.
David Gallo’s set design provides a glimpse into the industrial world beyond the boarding house and gave me something tangible to anchor the soundscape to.
There is a considerable amount of underscoring in this production, which can be challenging when the goal is maintaining vocal transparency. Working closely with Steve Bargonetti was invaluable. We spent a great deal of time shaping how the music lived beneath the text so that it supported the storytelling without competing with the language. The cast was also exceptional at projecting and getting their voices off the stage. As a result, my work became less about amplifying voices and more about extending them naturally into the audience.
One of the things I love most about theatre is the direct connection between actor and audience. My goal was never to amplify that connection, but to preserve it. The technology’s job was simply to remove obstacles between the performers and the audience while remaining invisible.
