NUTS

I produce music.

I am the CEO of PARMA Recordings in North Hampton NH USA. Our work was nominated in the 2020 GRAMMY Awards and again in 2021, and two albums on which I served as Executive Producer have taken home the statue.

I am the President of the Zagreb Festival Orchestra in Zagreb HR and an Honorary Member of the Croatian Music Institute.

I compose, perform, and record music by myself, with Dreadnaught, and others. My album PLAYLAND ARCADE was released in 2021 and praised as "immaculately executed, hugely entertaining and gobsmacking wild tour" (DPRP).

From time to time I write a bit about making music, travel, the places I work, and the place I live.

And I am proud to serve as Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Music Hall and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra, both based in Portsmouth NH.

 

BOLTS

Bob Lord is a producer, composer, and bassist based in Portsmouth NH USA.  In 2015 Bob was named one of Musical America’s “30 Professionals of the Year: Key Influencers,” and as CEO of PARMA Recordings his work has been nominated for four GRAMMY Awards in 2019-21. 

“I’m a composer and performer by design, and a producer and music executive by accident,” says Lord.  “But at the core of it all is my constant urge to expand the definition of creativity, of being an artist, of being a producer, of being a musician.”  

PLAYLAND ARCADE, Lord’s 2021 debut solo album, is a convergence point of the disparate elements from what clearly is a remarkably diverse career.  Hard-charging prog-rock blowouts, atmospheric orchestral potboilers, gauzy jazz improvisations, retro instrumental pop, straight up foley – this is a producer’s album through and through, and it reflects Lord’s own artistic experiences in a kaleidoscopic fashion. 

The musicianship is as accomplished as it is audacious.  Highlighted by Lord’s molten, overdriven 8-string bass, the album features drummer Jamie Perkins (from the Billboard chart-topping group The Pretty Reckless) and keyboardist Duncan Watt (composer for “League of Legends”) with cameos by Ed Jurdi (Band of Heathens, Trigger Hippy), Andy Happel (Thanks To Gravity), and the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, with percussion recorded in Havana, Cuba. 

Lord’s resume is a particularly unusual one bolstered by some truly singular credits: with Pete Townshend of The Who, Bob co-produced the double album METHOD MUSIC by Lawrence Ball, released in 2012 on Navona Records and hailed by Pitchfork for its “wondrous, rippling, and startlingly tactile music.”  

He is also the music producer of WILD SYMPHONY, an orchestral suite composed by the #1 NY Times bestselling author Dan Brown (“The Da Vinci Code”) which accompanies the illustrated children's book of the same title released in 2020.  The book is published in more than 40 countries worldwide. 

In 1996 Bob co-founded the award-winning group Dreadnaught, described by Relix Magazine as “the country's best 'pure' prog-rock combo.”  The band has performed with artists such as John Entwistle (The Who), Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, King Crimson), and NRBQ, and their 25th anniversary album NORTHERN BURNER, released in 2021, was hailed as "another instrumental tour de force that is distinctly Dreadnaught" (The Progressive Aspect).

Formed in 2008 to produce contemporary classical, jazz, and experimental music, Lord’s company PARMA Recordings features work by GRAMMY winner Richard Stoltzman, Pulitzer winner Yehudi Wyner, and Emmy winner Bruce Babcock, among others.  PARMA’s music can be heard in products and projects from ABC, CBS, Microsoft, HBO, Nintendo, and many more.  In 2022, PARMA received the National Arts Award from The American Prize for "outstanding services to the performing arts over an extended period of time."

As of this writing Lord has more than 1,000 recording/production credits on his resume, including the 2016 release ABRAZO: THE HAVANA SESSIONS, one of the first productions by an American music company in Cuba following the loosening of diplomatic relations.  With PARMA, he regularly produces sessions and events in countries such as the US, UK, Czech Republic, Croatia, Greece, Malta, Armenia, Russia, Cuba, Slovakia, China, and Poland. 

Since 2005 Bob been the Music Director for the New Hampshire Public Radio/The Music Hall series “Writers On A New England Stage” in Portsmouth NH, where he has shared the stage with Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Salman Rushdie, Patti Smith, Tom Brokaw, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Alan Alda, Judy Blume, and others.  In 2021, he was elected Chair of the Board of Trustees of The Music Hall, the first musician to occupy the position.

Lord composed the theme song for NHPR’s flagship morning show “The Exchange” in 2005, which aired until the show ended in 2021.  He is President of the Zagreb Festival Orchestra in Zagreb HR, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra in his home in seacoast New Hampshire.