Jonathan Goldsmith

Music Producer

Jonathan Goldsmith began his career as a music producer. His first major success was earning a Juno Award nomination for producing the hit comedy single “Take Off” by Bob and Doug McKenzie (Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis) of SCTV. He received another Producer of the Year Juno nomination in 1984 for co-producing Bruce Cockburn’s platinum-selling Stealing Fire (1984) and the hit song “Lovers in a Dangerous Time.”

Goldsmith went on to produce three more studio albums and a live album for Cockburn. He has also produced albums for such Canadian artists as Jane Siberry, the Nylons, the Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, Jenn Grant and Sara Slean.

Film and TV Composer

Jonathan Goldsmith also hit the ground running as a composer for film and television. His first film score, for the tax shelter-era slasher flick Visiting Hours (1982), received a Genie Award nomination. He then scored several TV movies and the series The Twilight Zone (including an episode directed by Atom Egoyan) before earning his second Genie nomination for his score for Sturla Gunnarsson’s Diplomatic Immunity (1991).

Goldsmith worked almost exclusively in television for most of the 1990s. He earned six Gemini Award nominations in four years, winning for the 1997 TV movies Pit Pony (co-starring a young Elliot Page) and Dead Silence. Goldsmith received another Genie nomination for Gunnarsson’s 1998 adaptation of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and won a BAFTA Award for scoring the CBC/Channel 4 mini-series Sex Traffic (2004). He also won a Gemini Award for scoring the CBC TV movie Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making (2005).

Goldsmith has collaborated several times with acclaimed actor-director Sarah Polley. He wrote the scores for her films Away from Her (2006) and Take this Waltz (2011) and arranged some of the music in her award-winning documentary Stories We Tell (2012). Goldsmith also scored documentaries by Gunnarsson (Air India 182, 2008), John Walker (Passage, 2008), Dave York (Weibo’s War, 2011, about infamous eco-activist Wiebo Ludwig), Rob Stewart (Sharkwater Extinction, 2018) and Nisha Pahuja (To Kill a Tiger, 2022). The latter earned Goldsmith one of three 2023 Canadian Screen Awards; the other two were for the CBC mini-series The Porter (2022).

Goldsmith also composed music for the TV series Titanic, Michael: Every Day, Sensitive Skin and The Trades, Michael McGowan’s 2021 adaptation of Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows, and the Mr. Dressup documentary Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe (2023).

Other Activities

In addition to composing music for film and television, Jonathan Goldsmith is also an active musician in his own right. He is one of the founding members the Art of Time Ensemble, a musicians’ collective for which he is a regular contributor, arranger and composer. The Art of Time Ensemble has headlined performances of avant-garde and experimental classical music at major Canadian venues like Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. It has collaborated with experimental composers like Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of the famous Russian composer) and has also performed the works of Arnold Schoenberg at the Glenn Gould Studio. (See Glenn Gould.)

Goldsmith is also a pianist in Nick Buzz, an “intergalactic cabaret orchestra” created in 1992 with Canadian musicians Hugh Marsh, Martin Tielli (of the Rheostatics) and Rob Piltch. They formed Nick Buzz after recording a track featured on a Joni Mitchell tribute album. The group released its first album, Circo, in 1996.

Awards

Gemini Awards

• Best Original Music for a Program or Miniseries (Dead Silence) (March 1998)
• Best Original Music for a Program or Miniseries (Pit Pony) (October 1998)
• Best Original Music Score for a Program or Miniseries (Trudeau II: Maverick in the Making) (2006)
• Best Original Music for a Dramatic Program, Mini-Series or TV Movie (The Nativity) (2011)

Canadian Screen Awards

• Original Score for a Program (Titanic) (2013)
• Best Original Music in a Documentary (To Kill a Tiger) (2023)
• Best Original Music, Drama (The Porter) (2023)
• Best Original Song (“Songbird” from The Porter, shared with Kaia Kater) (2023)

Others

• Best Original Television Music (Sex Traffic), BAFTA Awards (2005)