It’s been a pretty special week at Broadway’s “Buena Vista Social Club,” which won five Tony Awards on Sunday night, including one for Best Sound Design. The show’s nightly audio mixer is Timothy Jarrell, a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and, this week, a total rock star.

“People are coming up to the booth and asking to get a picture taken with the sound team,” Jarrell said of what has been a week filled with utter joy.

“It’s been amazing – but it doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere because I watch this show every night, and I know how very special it is.”

An audio mixer arranges multiple input audio signals to find the perfect balance and tone quality for the listener. It is considered one of the invisible (but certainly not unheard) arts, which means you don’t get much public recognition for your work. The Tony Award officially went to Sound Designer Jonathan Deans, but Jarrell and the whole “Buena Vista” team, he said, are feeling the love.

It’s just that he felt that love neither inside Radio City Music Hall nor at the company viewing party. “I was in a hotel room across the street at the moment our category was announced,” he said with a laugh, “so I learned about it from a text.” Still …

“It’s so crazy what a collaborative team it takes to make these things happen,” Jarrell said. “But we don’t feel like we need to be seen – because we are felt.”

He means, of course, the music. “Buena Vista Social Club,” which opened off-Broadway in December 2023 before its Broadway transfer three months ago, is based on the eponymous band’s 1997 album and documentary of the same name. The musical, with songs entirely in Spanish, celebrates Cuba’s rich musical heritage while telling the story of the band’s legendary musicians. But this is unlike any other Broadway experience, Jarrell said.

The show is selling out every night, but that’s OK, he said, “because people are actually opting for standing-room-only tickets over a seat so they can get up and dance.”

The true star of the show is the 10-piece band that occupies center stage for much of the performance. The orchestra was given its own special Tony Award for that very reason.

“With most traditional musicals, vocals are the most important thing in the mix because the lyrics keep the story going forward,” Jarrell said. “We actually move the story forward through the emotion of each song, which allows me to mix the music in a way that feels more like you’re going to a concert than a play.”

The show, he said, is having a profound impact on audiences, especially given the incendiary issue of immigration in America right now. “We are connecting with people who are caught up in this issue, and when they come to our show, they are really feeling seen and feeling heard,” he said.

And when the show is over …?

“If you ever notice something we have done with the sound, then it’s because we have done something wrong,” Jarrell said. “Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice to get this recognition. But it’s more rewarding when we walk out of the theater at the end of the night and the audience is happy – and no one has noticed anything that we did.”

Jarrell moved to Colorado for college at UNC and officially still lives in Denver, even though he put in seven years on the Broadway and touring versions of “Waitress” and has been working on “Buena Vista” for the past 20 months. He spent his formative years working for the Stampede Troupe in Greeley and the Candlelight Dinner Playhouse in Johnstown. He’s particularly proud of a full-orchestra production of “1776” the Greeley Philharmonic presented 20 years ago at the Union Colony Civic Center. He mixed the Broadway revival of “1776” in 2023.

He shouts out the nationally acclaimed theater department at UNC “for being instrumental in giving me a place to really grow and learn”; Bob and Judy Bauer, from whom he bought Theatrix, the first technical theater supply company in Colorado (it closed in 2003); Tylene and Scott Gagnon from The Stampede Troupe; James McElwee, an audio engineer at the local chapter of the IATSE union; and former UNC teacher (and theater journalist) Bryan VanDriel. 

That sounds about right

Jarrell isn’t the only Colorado audio mixer on Broadway right now. Parker Stegmaier, a Colorado State University theater grad from Steamboat Springs, is the audio mixer for “Operation Mincemeat,”  which was nominated for four Tony Awards (but not, alas, for sound design).

Stegmaier already has six Broadway credits, most recently “Our Town.” He is also head of audio at NETworks, the leading touring production company for the Broadway theater community.

“If I give people just a moment of happiness or make them change their whole life around in a positive way because of my work, then I will have succeeded,” Stegmaier writes on his LinkedIn profile.