George Zarr

Biography

George Zarr is a Faculty member in the Communication Department, Radio concentration. He is an award-winning producer, writer, director, and composer.

He was formerly at Sirius Satellite Radio as Executive Producer of “Voices of Achievement” and “The Hilly Rose Show.” As Manager of Spoken Word Programming, he helped launch their forty talk channels. For five years, he worked at the SYFI Channel as a Senior Producer for "Seeing Ear Theater" where he was directly involved in over forty original programs, including the creation of the first Internet musical “The First (and Last) Musical on Mars” (later staged at Chicago’s New Rock Theatre). He directed/wrote for their “Barbarian Moron” flash animation series and his episodes from SYFI’s “Tales from the Crypt” are distributed by Highbridge Audio. 

George was co-writer/producer/director of the National Public Radio/Dove Audio-distributed comedy series “Visit New Grimston, Anyway,” and the award-winning anthology “Little Chills,” both in the collection of The Museum of Television and Radio in New York City. He composed "Walking Up Broadway," a commissioned solo harp piece that premiered at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, was director/writer of the off-off-Broadway sketch comedy "Mind Floss," and was composer/librettist/director of "Who's On Faust?" for the American Chamber Opera Company in Manhattan. He received the New York City Mayoral Citation for his concerto "Reception for Steel Drum and Orchestra.”

George Zarr’s most recent audio projects as a producer, writer, director, and composer for Blackstone Publishing and Audible include:

A four-part comedy series Hurry! Hurry! It’s Almost Christmas! Musical adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Bell and the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty The audio drama Western-musical trilogy Hoofbeats in My Heart, Hoofbeats in My Heart Yet Again, and Hoofbeats in My Heart for a Third Time A five-part, mystery-horror anthology series The Dark of the Moon Inn Adaptations of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost 

Also for Blackstone/Audible, George has directed the audio drama The Secret Garden and audiobooks Bambi, The Little Mermaid, and Winnie-the-Pooh. He is the writer, director, and producer of the commissioned audio documentary Lincoln in Music and Letters for WFMT Syndication.

He attended Stuyvesant High School, an honors science institution in New York City, and earned his B.S. from the Polytechnic Institute of New York and his M.A from Columbia College Chicago.

Degrees

B.S., System Engineering Polytechnic Institute of NYU 1972
M.F.A., Interdisciplinary Arts Columbia College Chicago 2018