Debashis Sinha

Driven by a deep commitment to the primacy of sound in creative expression, Debashis Sinha has created numerous audio-centred collaborative and solo projects across Canada and internationally. He has created award-winning sound designs and music for contemporary dance, video, film, and theatre, and has enjoyed a long relationship with many of Canada’s pre-eminent stage companies and independent theatres, including numerous works for Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Stratford Festival, Soulpepper Theatre Company, Canadian Stage, Why Not Theatre, and many others. His live performances and sound research have taken him from Japan to Yellowknife to Berlin to virtual worlds online. 

His speculative mythology-driven sound practice has led to live appearances at MUTEK (Japan and Mexico), the Guelph Jazz Festival, the Banff Centre, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, among others, and he has related fixed-media releases on Berlin’s Establishment Records imprint, Other People Records, Pluie/Noir, Gusstaff, online, in gallery spaces and elsewhere. These research-creation projects entangle storytelling, sonic arts, ethnographic practice, machine learning and neural networks, new modes of cultural transmission, music composition and urban studies. He has presented this work in academic conferences and artistic exhibitions worldwide, including feature presentations at Toronto’s own Museum of Contemporary Art, NeurIPS, and the Royal Anthropological Society, among others, and research creation residences at Akademie der Künste, Elektronmusic Studion Stockholm and elsewhere.

Sinha has received multiple awards and nominations for his work, notably being named a finalist for the Siminovitch Prize, Canada’s largest theatre arts award. He also has won multiple Dora Awards which recognize theatre excellence in Toronto, including a 2022 Dora Award for Outstanding Achievement in Design (Opera). He is also the 2023 Ontario Arts Council’s Louis Applebaum Composer’s Award Laureate. His research practice has been supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Toronto Metropolitan University, and his artistic work over the years has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and the Toronto Arts Council.

He has taught seminars and courses at the National Theatre School of Canada, York University, the University of Toronto, the Stratford Festival and other institutions internationally, and is an external Research Fellow at Carleton University's Research Centre for Sound, Music and Society in Canada and the York University Sensorium lab.