Bobby McElver

Below are selected Projects from my portfolio

Lunar Retreat - 2024-2026

I am composing original music and sound design for Nichole Canuso’s newest installation/dance piece.

Lunar Retreat is an interactive, multi-sensory performance inspired by the gradual distance growing between the Moon and Earth. This immersive journey invites audiences to wander, witness, and reflect on how we move through care, loss, and transformation—both individually and collectively.

The sound experience is a combination of loudspeaker spatial audio environments and headphone-based experiences.

We have had several residency presentations throughout 2024-2026 and will have an official premiere at FringeArts festival in September, 2026, in Philadelphia.

Music samples coming soon…

Here There Are Blueberries - 2022-2026

I am the sound designer for the award-winning Here There Are Blueberries, a highly acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-nominated documentary play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich. It tells the true historical story of a mysterious Nazi-era photo album that arrived at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, revealing how ordinary people participated in the Holocaust.

I was nominated for a Helen Hayes award for Outstanding Sound Design. Our production won a Lucille Lortel award for Outstanding Play, and received 5 other nominations. It has toured the US, was presented in London, and received many awards and nominations.

NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) - 2021-2026

496-channel sound system and 4,000 individually reactive LEDs 

Collaboration with visual and multimedia artist Andrew Schneider who created 4000 points of individually-controlled light which an audience walks through. At each point of light is a “sound hologram” with a recording – a story, a piece of music, a memory. Visitors may record their own story for the next visitor at a small exit booth after the experience. 

My custom-built wave field synthesis loudspeaker array wraps around 3 sides of a very large star field. A narrator’s voice follows the audience as they move through the space, and the system creates intimate sound locations for 1-8 people at a time. Sounds float and move throughout the space in a volumetric way.  

Part meditation, part exploration, the stars draws visitors into a hyper-focus of the present.

THE OTHER SHORE: Always Now - 2023

155-channel wave field synthesis loudspeaker array, 12 floor surround speakers and 2 subwoofers.

Collaboration with dance company zoe | juniper on The Other Shore: Always Now, 2023. Always Now is the first of two complementary sections of zoe | juniper’s performance, The Other Shore. In Always Now, the audience is guided to experience dance lying comfortably on the floor, while multiple dancers move around and above them. Always Now explores perspective, lived experience, and body language.

Utilizing an overhead Wave Field Synthesis array, sound holograms intimately traveled past audience’s faces as they lay on the floor, recreating the sounds of the real dancer’s bodies in a ghost-like echo. After the real dancers pass over the audience, the ghost recordings follow.  Sounds of clothing brushing and body movements are heard in the exact locations, absent from the dancer.  

Each audience member experiences their own unique performance based on where they are lying, in essence, co-choreographing the performance with Zoe. Sound and music travels above and around the listeners.

Circular Dimensions x Microscape - 2022

60 surround speakers installed within a 25,000-foot PVC pipe sculpture 

I collaborated with Palm Springs artist Cristopher Cichocki and LA-based sound designer Jonathan Snipes on the architectural and sound installation Circular Dimensions x Microscape for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The 25,000-foot PVC pipe sculpture, designed by Cichocki, was the centerpiece of the festival. I partnered with L-Acoustics to create a 60-speaker immersive sound system using pilot equipment never used before. Together with Snipes, I developed interactive sound spatialization tools for Cichocki to "live DJ" the sound, moving music around the installation during his 7-hour DJ sets, offering a unique, dynamic experience for over 750,000 attendees. 

THE DEEP: Chapter 8 - 2019

186-channel wave field synthesis loudspeaker array, one subwoofer.

clipping.'s project The Deep: Chapter 8 at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) was a dark sci-fi audio installation and gallery soundtrack based on an abandoned audiobook score for the novella based on their song. The song The Deep contains a story originally commissioned for This American Life in 2017 about the underwater-dwelling descendants of African women thrown off slave ships.

The band and I constructed a site-specific sound installation which I spatialized in the WFS array.

AFTER - 2017-2019

372-ch wave field synthesis loudspeaker array system. Two arrays of 186-channels, overhead. The first theatrical use of overhead Wave Field Synthesis.

I was a co-creator and co-sound designer of Andrew Schneider’s AFTER, which included a 20-minute complete visual sensory deprivation blackout along with a WFS sound score.

YOUARENOWHERE - 2015-2024

I was a co-creator of the Obie-award winning theater production YOUARENOWHERE. Over 100 performances in 13 international cities from 2015-2024.

I also mixed almost every performance, refining the sound design with Andrew throughout the years.

What began as a 10-minute short piece turned into a career-changing international sensation. It’s an accessible and human show about quantum physics with a very big reveal.

The lights and sound are meticulously programmed for precise synchronicity.

THE WOOSTER GROUP (2011-2016)

I was a company member of The Wooster Group from 2011–2016 where I worked on productions including The Room, Early Shaker Spirituals*, Early Plays, Vieux Carré, and Hamlet. I was a core creative member contributing to the unique collaborative environment at The Wooster Group. Extensive international touring and show development in NYC. Responsible for sound design, interactive live media cueing system design, sound engineering, mixing, and being a voice in the room every day of development. Occasional performer.

*Nominated for a 2015 Bessie for Outstanding Sound Design/Original Music

THANK YOU FOR COMING: PLAY
(2016-2018)

I designed the sound and co-created the musical score for part 2 of choreographer Faye Driscoll's THANK YOU FOR COMING series. The piece was developed at The Wexner Center and premiered at BAM in 2016. It toured nationally until 2018. I performed the score live for every performance, played the drums, and appeared on stage. 

ACting Stranger - 2015-2021

I am part of an experimental film project called Acting Stranger. My collaborator, Andrew Schneider, writes very short scenes. Andrew and a stranger (who signs up online) act them out together having never rehearsed, discussed, or met. No second takes. No obvious equipment. Just hidden microphones, quick thinking, and detailed post production audio work. Usually there's about 10 minutes to set up, check levels, shoot, and move on to the next location. 

In 2015 we made 32 short films in 3 days. Followed by a premiere in a large cinema for the Melbourne Festival. We remounted this project for On The Boards, in Seattle, in 2021.

Palissimo - endangered pieces (2013)

I co-created (along with Rachel's member Christian Frederickson) the musical score for Palissimo's Endangered Pieces. I made custom filters for Christian's viola, turning it into a "wall of sound" as well as performing on samplers, live FX, and creating original drone beds of sound.