Lorne Grossman

Lorne started playing piano at age 8 and drums at age 12. He attended University of Toronto
studying percussion and immediately went out to Stratford to play with the Stratford Festival in 1971.
He did this for three more years but in the fall of 1971 he also played for the Royal Alexandra Theatre
until 1980. National Ballet Orchestra and Canadian Opera Company came Lorne's way in the early 1970's so he kept very busy with all of this, not to mention that Lorne joined The O'Keefe Centre Orchestra also at this time and continued steadily with that organisation till 1991. By the mid 1970's, Lorne was very busy recording jingles at the big studios in downtown Toronto. The occasional tour with The Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Charlottetown Festival took Lorne across all of Canada and through the midwest of the United States. Tours to Mexico and Germany with the National Ballet of Canada were other exciting musical points of Lorne's career. In 1991, Lorne joined the Canadian tour of “The Phantom of the Opera" and went across Canada again. This tour became a national tour and Lorne went to Alaska and Hawaii twice in 1993 and 1994. In 1995, he toured the United States with "Music of the Night" all through the US. Back home and off the road, Lorne played 2-stints with Donny Osmond in "Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" in Toronto and a run of "Into the Woods"at the St. Lawrence Centre. Ross Petty's fabulous pantomimes at Christmas time were where Lorne could be located in the pit from the mid 1990's till 2004.

By 2000, things were different on the music scene around Toronto, so Lorne did some regional theatre
productions of "I Do I Do" in Petrolia, "Cats" in Orillia, "Jesus Christ Superstar" and “Kiss Me Kate" in Orillia, "Menopositive" in Waterloo, "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at Sheridan College in Oakville, "Hey Marilyn" at The St. Lawrence Centre, "Anne of Green Gables" in Drayton and Penetanguishene and then again in Grand Bend and Cambridge in 2015. Lorne did a four month run of "Cats" at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto during the summer of 2013.

Now while Lorne was playing lots of theatre since 2000, he played even more with orchestras from then
until the present. A favourite gig was being the drum set player for the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa playing their pops concerts whether it was jazz, rock or show style of playing. Lorne played first as a percussionist and then as the timpanist with the Hannaford Street Silver Band based in Toronto from 1996 - 2015.

Lorne is presently the timpanist with the Oakville Symphony, Peterborough Symphony, Rose Orchestra
in Brampton, Opera York in Richmond Hill and the Toronto Sinfonietta. He plays on an irregular basis as the timpanist or a percussionist with The Toronto Concert Orchestra, Ontario Philharmonic and Brantford Symphony.

Lorne and his wife live in Midland, Ontario for less time in traffic but obviously, to keep as busy as he is, all of the province gets to see Lorne's van on the road as he heads to yet, another gig.