Shattering the Brass Ceiling with Olivia Girdano

Today’s episode features Olivia Girdano, who was the Assistant Audio on the Tootsie tour with me! Olivia takes us through how she got into sound engineering and design, and the always exciting and changing responsibilities of being an audio engineer on tour. We then discuss the difficulty of walking the line as a young woman in an authority position who has to frequently teach and lead locals every week and thus navigate age/gender/power dynamics. We talk about how the push for arts equity is interconnected with reforming the education system as a whole, as well as funding the arts so that people from all backgrounds can pursue it without worrying about how they’re going to make a living wage. Lastly, we break down Christopher Tin’s “Mado Kara Mieru” to help demonstrate how sound designing is analogous to composing as an approach to building and layering musical elements in a compelling manner.