Ulysses, Abbey Theatre picture: Ros Kavanagh.
Current & recent work
At the start of 2026, Jon was musical director for Cry Baby at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, leading a cast of 18 and a 7-piece band. Ongoing projects thereafter will include shows for Dragon Song Productions and the annual Enchanted Forest son et lumière in Faskally Woods, Perthshire.
Jon wrote songs and music for Cinderella, the 2025 Christmas show at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum theatre, in a critically-acclaimed production directed by Jemima Levick.
Into the Woods picture: Craig Fuller
Jon was also musical director for Pippin at the Scottish Institute, a drama school which sadly closed its doors later in the year, and for whom he had previously MD-ed Merrily We Roll Along at the nearby Howden Park Theatre in Livingston.
2024 saw another autumn spectacular at The Enchanted Forest where Jon was again a co-composer, working with Wavemakers Live to produce that year’s show Symphony of Nature, which was created in collaboration with co-composer RJ McConnell and director Karen Falconer, with lighting by Grant Anderson and animation from Bright Side Studios. Earlier in the year, Jon worked as MD with director Stuart Wood on Piaf for Bristol School of Acting at the studio theatre of Bristol Old Vic.
In November 2023 Jon was musical director for Into the Woods at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, working alongside director Atri Banerjee and designer Ken Harrison. It was a welcome revisit to a Sondheim piece which he first MD-ed in 2001 at the newly remodelled Byre Theatre in St Andrews with director Ken Alexander.
Cinderella picture: Mihaela Bodlovic
Other work in 2025 included a new production of Danny Robins’ 2:22 A Ghost Story for Vienna’s English Theatre, a re-mount of the much-acclaimed Nan Shepherd, Naked & Unashamed for Firebrand Theatre in collaboration with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, and Luminara, the show title of the annual Enchanted Forest.
In February 2023 Jon was sound designer for The Man in the Submarine [Y Dyn yn y Llong Danfor], a new play by Laila Noble which won the inaugural St Andrews Playwriting Competition and premièred at the Byre Theatre in a collaboration with Perth Theatre. Jon worked with co-directors Lu Kemp & Chris Stuart Wilson to conjure an underwater world, complete with surreal fish and malfunctioning radio telecommunications, in an affecting exploration of dementia.
The Man in the Submarine picture: Mihaela Bodlovic
There was a welcome return post-pandemic of The Enchanted Forest in September 2022 with its 20th anniversary show Together, which ran nightly until the end of October. Jon has contributed music for the event since 2013 with co-composers Rachel Cullen and RJ McConnell.
The event attracts over 80,000 visitors annually over a 4-week run, and has won many cultural and tourism awards. For Together, Jon and Rachel worked closely with creatives Ian Greenhill & Rux Dragan at Studio Something and with event company Wavemakers Live, as well as specialist audio services company DM Audio.
The Signalman: A Play, A Pie & A Pint
Jon returned to Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum in June 2022 as pianist and musical director for a run of Tom McGrath’s Laurel & Hardy, a re-mounting of the hugely popular production from 17 years ago, which also toured to Dublin’s Olympia Theatre.
In education, Jon continues as an occasional visiting lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and, post-pandemic, was a peripatetic teacher of piano & theory at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh and an examiner with the Music Teachers’ Board.
September 2021 saw a re-mount of Tom McGovern’s one-man show The Signalman for Perth Theatre. Written by Peter Arnott for A Play, A Pie & A Pint and the Traverse, it garnered three awards in the 2020 Critics’ Awards: for Best Production, Best New Play and Best Male Performance. It subsequently also toured to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.
Ulysses, Abbey Theatre picture: Ros Kavanagh
In 2018 Jon was pleased to return to the Abbey Theatre Dublin to re-mount and perform in Graham McLaren's production of Ulysses, in an adaptation by Dermot Bolger. It followed a popular and successful run as part of the 2017 Dublin Theatre Festival.
Also in 2018 he was composer and sound designer for two plays by Rona Munro: Bold Girls for the Citizens Theatre Glasgow, and The Last Witch, a co-production between Pitlochry Theatre and Firebrand Theatre, which subsequently toured to the Tron in Glasgow and the Traverse in Edinburgh.
Jon wrote or arranged much of the music for Pitlochry’s 2018 repertory season, with productions in weekly rep including Travesties,and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.
He was the musical supervisor for the season’s musical Chicago, which overtook his 2011 production of My Fair Lady to become the theatre’s best-selling show ever. In the autumn he returned to The Enchanted Forest for its 2018 show, Of the Wild.
Bold Girls picture: Tim Morozzo
The Last Witch / Travesties / The Rise & Fall of Little Voice pictures: Douglas McBride