Who We Are

Originally a violinist, Elliot began his journey in music and audio on the violin using the Suzuki method at the age of four. While he loved his experience on this instrument, it wasn’t enough. He began playing piano at eight, guitar at 12 and at 20, Daft Punk convinced him to give the computer a shot, too. (thankfully!)

To pursue music and audio, Elliot enlisted in the Army National Guard. This path led to degrees in Music Composition and Sound Design, a commission as a Military Officer, and his work being featured in campaigns for United Airlines, Instagram, Spiderman: Far From Home, GMC, The Godrej Group, Chevrolet Motors, the Goodman Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet as well as many films and games.

Elliot always focuses on creating distinct personality and aesthetic in all audio while maintaining that memorable “hummable” factor in his music. He brings this sensibility to his work in games, film, trailer and commercial projects. He has served as Soundpost Co-Chair for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Overture Council and teaches as Adjunct Faculty in the Film and Game programs at DePaul University.

Jason Kanter began his career in music production, recording punk and metal bands in the New York metro area. While he has since provided a range of audio services for film and television, his primary focus for over two decades has been game audio.

He previously served as Audio Director at Avalanche Studios, where he led audio teams to deliver award-nominated soundtracks for Just Cause 3, Just Cause 4, and Contraband, currently in development for Microsoft.

Earlier in his career, Jason contributed to a number of notable titles, including BioShock 2, League of Legends, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, The Sims 2, Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery Game, and CrimeCraft.

Beyond his work in game audio, Jason is passionate about fostering community. In 2016, he co-founded NYC Game Audio (NYCGA), a monthly gathering for sound designers, composers, and game developers to share presentations, discuss sound for film and games, and network.

Michelle has over a decade of experience in the AAA Games Industry. She has worked in Account Administration, Quality Assurance, Sound Design and Integration with a player experience first mindset. She’s a certified Wwise End User who also presented on the 2020 Wwise Tour Online discussing the Sonic Storytelling of the award winning audio for Sucker Punch Productions “Ghost of Tsushima”.

She jumped into games as a Games Master for Blizzard Entertainment’s “World of Warcraft” before joining Carbine Studios to provide sound design and implementation for the Massively Multiplayer Online game “Wildstar”.

Michelle was nominated for “The Golden Reel Award” for her work on “Ghost of Tsushima” and recognized for outstanding achievement by the Motion Picture Sound Editors in 2020. She is also a recipient of “Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design” D.I.C.E. Awards (2021) and “Audio Achievement” BAFTA (2021).

When not working, she’s raising and training two wonderful dogs who can communicate using Voice Recorded Buttons! Her thumb has recently been turning green with gardening and landscaping. She enjoys playing couch-co-ops with her spouse and recently sunk over 100 hours playing “Elden Ring”.

Coming from a background of classical music training and electronic music production, Jon has woven a career through the industry gaining experience in Audio Post, Sound Design, Music Production, Mixing, Mastering and Composing.

With his focus now on sound design and mixing, Jon has been fortunate enough to work on a wide variety of projects ranging from blockbuster franchises such as Avatar 2, Black Panther and Star Wars as well as top charting Netflix animations and high action features. He has also enjoyed designing sound scapes for games such as World of Mechs, Moonton MLBB as well as online content for Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars, Boom Beach and Football Manager

With a passion for all things electronic, he creates rich sound worlds that can be as aggressive as they are delicate. He also secretly enjoys writing in third person and gets annoyed if no comments are made about his beard.

Best known for his work on video game scores as diverse as the BAFTA-nominated “Gunpoint”, “Artemis: the Spaceship Bridge Simulator”, “For The King”, and the award-winning “Fossil Echo”, John Robert Matz is a Chicago-based composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and music educator.

Classically trained, he has incorporated his educational multi-disciplinary musical training throughout his works, performing a variety of wind, brass, string and percussive instruments in his game and film scores, and using his knowledge to stretch instrumental timbres and find new sounds.

John Robert is a member of ASCAP, and the Game Audio Network Guild, and has been honored with a nomination for “Best Video Game Score” for the ASCAP Screen Awards, and in the 2017 G.A.N.G. Awards, winning “Best Interactive Score” for his work on “Fossil Echo”, as well as being named G.A.N.G.’s “Rookie of the Year” for 2017. In his spare time, he enjoys worrying about his Steam backlog, reading good books, and removing cats from his MIDI controllers.

Bonnie has her fingers in a plethora of audio pies and has worked on a variety of award-winning educational products, virtual and augmented reality simulations, interactive experiences, and audio plays/radio dramas including “I Expect You To Die”, Sea World’s “Race For The Beach”, “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” “Jurassic World Revealed,” “Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues,” “Bards Tale IV”, KQMP’s “At The Tone”, and “HUSH: In Search of Dominic Ward”.

Her voice can be heard in “Pathfinder: Kingmaker”, “Death and Taxes”, “Water Bears,” “Hell Architect,” “Wasteland 3”, “Codename Blank”, “Mandible Judy”, “The Dracula Radioplay Experience” and “The Call of the Flame: An Audio Play”, and as a singer/vocalist on soundtrack and tribute albums. A singer on live, and virtual, operatic, choral, and musical ensembles, she also co-created and produced “Evenings in Quarantine: The Zombie Opera”, “Super Smash Opera” it’s sequel “Aria Kart,” and herds a choir of ‘chickens’ known, “The Bwak Choir.”

Active on the National Audio Theatre Festivals (Hear Now) board, and the Game Audio Network Guild, she also speaks at a variety of video game and audio conferences, has lectured at the Berklee School of Music, Duquesne University, Teknofonic, and taught audio for games and animation at the Art Institute of Austin.

Thomas Kresge is a composer, arranger, orchestrator, copyist, saxophonist, and educator with credits spanning film, television, video games, musical theater, and live concerts.

His professional credits include orchestrations, arranging, and music preparation for Marco Beltrami (Waiting for the Barbarians, Shadows in My Eyes, Nine Perfect Strangers, Bach by Beltrami), Diana Ross (2019 tour, NBC’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting), Michael James Scott, Disney (The Incredibles 2 trailer campaign), Jacob Yoffee (Kohl’s trailer campaign), and others, as well as fully arranging the scores for the musicals “Way Back When” and “Esther.” He contributes regularly as an arranger for the Game Brass and as producer on their albums since 2018.

Thomas received his Bachelors of Music Composition from George Mason University before going on to earn a Master’s of Film Scoring from the Seattle Film Institute, under the mentorship of Hummie Mann. When he’s not spending time making or playing music, he’s probably busy cooking and mixing drinks with his wife or dreaming about that cat he’s wanted but not yet committed to adopting yet.

Starting with the high school speech team, studying mass communication in college, working in radio for several years, then moving into audio QA and eventually a senior technical audio designer at Deep Silver Volition, Brendon has made a life out of delivering sound to people. When he’s not cutting wood or lost in the woods, he spends his time solving problems, doing puzzles, or playing with his dog.

Described by his peers as a mechanic, a wizard, or a robot depending on who you ask, Brendon is just a problem solver at heart. Having worked on or fully built every kind of audio system from weapons, vehicles, radio, ambience, interactive/procedural music… the list goes on, there’s always a solution he’s either already done or at least tried. As a Wwise specialist, he always has the audio team at front of mind when designing systems while also prioritizing the player experience as a certified accessibility specialist.

Kirsty Gillmore is a creative Voice & Performance Director and Casting Director. In 2021 she was selected for the prestigious BAFTA Breakthrough UK programme as a Voice Director for Games.

She has directed and cast actors across the globe for over 50 game titles, most recently working for almost 4 years on the multi-award winning Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios). Other game credits include Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (Infinity Ward), Luna Abyss (Bonsai Collective), Valorant (Riot), Synapse (nDreams), the Call of the Wild series (Avalanche Studios), LiveALive (Square Enix) and Destruction AllStars (Lucid Games).

Animation directing credits include Shasha & Milo (Pop UK, Discovery Kids) and forthcoming series for Netflix. Audio drama casting and directing credits include projects for Audible and others.

Trained in theatre directing, Kirsty has directed and taught at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (UK), Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (UK) and Guildhall School of Music and Drama (UK). She developed and teaches the UK’s first full-length undergraduate module in Acting for Video Games, at Institute of Contemporary Theatre. She has been a juror for the BAFTA Games Awards, BAFTA Film Awards and BAFTA Young Game Designer Awards and an invited speaker and panellist for GDC, GameSoundCon and BAFTA.

From the very beginning, Trevor always had his sights set on working in game audio. Blending his self-taught curriculum with a college education and knowledge from peers in his profession, Trevor’s goal is to always make games play and sound as good as possible.

Trevor is an experienced Technical Sound Designer in AAA game development through his time at Deep Silver Volition working on content and implementation for “Saints Row.” Over the last 5 years Trevor has built a personal sound library, and continues to dive deeper into programming to become familiar with as much of game development as he can.

Trevor believes he will never stop learning, and always tries to discover new ways to approach his work. Outside of his time in game audio, he can be found messing with new technology, organizing game nights with friends, or shuffle dancing, of all things!

Adam started out his career in Video Game Audio as a Composer after stumbling across a YouTube video about vertical, adaptive music in video games. Having studied both Science and Music, Game Audio was the perfect intersection between his shared passions of the technical and creative.

After delivering some of his first music for games, he tried his hand at implementation and ended up loving it! From then on, he’s strived to elevate audio as a mechanic in every game that he works on, while also getting his hands on every aspect of game audio as needed.

Adam is always looking for new audio challenges and problems to solve. Whatever the needs of development are, he’s ready to dive in, set them up for continued audio success, and proud to be doing that at Unlock Audio!

Olivia Brady is a Project Manager with years of previous experience at Deep Silver Volition. While at Volition she worked with cross functional teams building AAA games and DLC packs. Olivia believes communication is something that should be clear, precise, and open.

She is a knowledgeable and ethical problem solver who finds potentially too much joy in spreadsheets and Jira, and prides herself in helping teams achieve their best in any situation. When not supporting teams, Olivia is spending time playing the latest games with her friends.

Caio Miguel Jiacomini is a video game sound designer and audio software developer. He is passionate about creating distinctive and dynamic audio that elevates gameplay and emotions, and is versed with the entire game audio pipeline: from creative sound design to the technical realm of audio programming.

At Psyonix, he worked on audio for seasons 11 and 12 of Rocket League, where he designed and implemented sounds for in-game assets and systems, handled audio post-production for announcement trailers, and also developed proprietary audio software for the game.

He has worked with teams of all sizes in several audio capacities. Other projects include working as a sound designer and composer on Sondering Studio’s debut title A Taste of the Past, collaborating with Brazilian musical collective Rosabege, and working on the indie tactics RPG Starweave as an audio director leading a seven-person audio team.

Another notable project is the expansion of the CsoundUnity library – a solution for real-time audio synthesis for the Unity game engine. Working alongside Dr. Richard Boulanger and Mateo Larrea Ferro, he developed scripts and tools to extend the functionalities of the library, facilitating the development of audio-centric applications. The team developed two VR applications to showcase the tools they built, also publishing a paper about their work at the 6th International Csound Conference held at the Technological University of the Shannons University in Athlone, Ireland.

He was born in São Paulo, Brazil, where he started studying music at the age of ten with an acoustic guitar handcrafted by his grandfather. In 2017 he moved to the United States to pursue a Bachelor’s degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston. He develops his own synthesizers for fun and is a co-organizer of the Game Audio Boston meetup group. When he’s not being a massive audio nerd, Caio likes to sit outside with a good book while watching over the packs of menacing geese that roam the streets of Boston.

Knaddersound is the collaboration of Mathilde Hoffmann and Felix Barbarino – two sound designers who bond over co-op games, terrible puns and cocoa with oat milk.

Mathilde and Felix met in the Music Academy where they studied Music Design. After graduation, Mathilde worked as a sound designer at Daedalic Entertainment, making sounds on award-winning games such as “Ken Follett’s: The Pillars of the Earth”, while Felix worked in professional recording studios, mixing worldwide commercial spots and designing sounds for some of the largest automotive brands.

When they joined forces to score and design the sounds for the popular couch-coop game “Unrailed!”, Knaddersound was formed, specializing in unique, crispy and juicy sound worlds.

Grace has designed and implemented sounds both in-house at Rebellion and freelance for multiple AAA games spanning realistic and fictional genres, for multiplayer and single player experiences. Prior to working in games, Grace directed the audio for 360 and VR marketing experiences, working on all areas from location recording, dialogue to composition and sound design. She has also co-run an electronic music record label based in South London, spurred by her love of floor-stomping synths.

Grace is a lover of spatial audio and all things VR believing that it is the future of ultimate immersion! She studied spatial audio under an ambisonics guru for the BBC at UCL.

Player of a few instruments, lover of drums. You can also hear her voice on a few Dell ads.

Idiom Loop co-founder Jay Clipperton demonstrates expertise and comfort in every aspect of the audio pipeline from asset creation and composition to tools programming, orchestration and full-scale development. His uniquely multi-disciplinary history has allowed him the opportunity to contribute to titles across all platforms, often serving as the communication throughline to merge the creative and technical needs of a project.

Multi-instrumentalist, performer and teacher/clinician he has instructed hundreds of students in song-writing workshops and musical proficiency, served as musical director for the stage and numerous a cappella groups. During his time as a performer, he had the opportunity to share the stage with Ben Folds, The Nylons, The Swingle Singers and many vocal stalwarts while touring across North America.

He enjoys the technical chicanery of VR experiences, and that perfect “aha” moment when a sound perfectly syncs with visuals for the first time. Past projects include: VR bullet-hell “Blasters of the Universe”, AR wave shooter “Marvel Dimension of Heroes”, audio-only RPG “The Vale: Shadow of the Crown”, and comedic firefighting sim “Embr”.