Connolly, Robert

Websites:  https://www.qedmedia.ca/, https://www.bobconnolly.com/
Origin: Hamilton, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

I was born in 1954, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada — a small city noted for it’s steel production. My father was a police officer who worked hard to save money for my university tuition, and realized that I had a natural affinity to teach myself how to do things – one of them was that I taught myself how to play a wide variety of musical instruments. Upon graduating high school, I took a leave from public education for 3 years, and traveled Canada extensively as a professional musician playing in night clubs. For me it was a wonderful way to get out and see the beauty of nature, explore remote quaint and cozy mining towns, and meet the friendly first nations people of Canada that would later shape my life.

In 1974 at the age of 20, instead of going to university, I decided to plant my roots in Toronto, the media capital of Canada. With the help of my father, we invested the university tuition towards the construction of a professional modern 8-track music recording studio, with the intent on offering my creative music production services to others.

Music Production
It was here that I produced one record in 1978 titled “Robert Connolly Plateau” in which I play keyboards (Minimoog, Hammond B3, Mellowtron), bass, and guitar. It was released independently as a progressive conceptual “Chariots of the Gods” album that comes complete with a comic book. Since it’s release almost 40 years ago, it has become a collectors item for those that follow early progressive prog-rock themed music. Instead of using the recording studio to develop my career as a performing music recording artist, I decided to focus my attention in helping other musicians as their engineer, co-writer, music producer or artist manager.

With the introduction of the Apple Macintosh computer, my self-taught attitude allowed me to embrace computer MIDI music. With the use of digital audio samples and MIDI keyboards, I began creating entire music albums and movie soundtracks on my Mac.

Broadcast Television
As the Mac’s computer processing speed increased, I transitioned to using the Mac as a digital video workstation for broadcast television production. With the introduction of MTV, I began producing short TV commercials, music videos, and long-format music concert specials. As the cost of making movies became less expensive by the introduction of new technology, I became an expert in post-production for low budget music movies. It was at this time I met my companion and partner who was a travel television show host. With the music industry in flux, it was the ideal time to use my experience with music to create meaningful, cutting edge, thought provoking social documentaries that hopefully could change the world for the better.

Together we traveled the world extensively for over 20 years to produce “Passport to Adventure” and “Timeless Places.” They dealt with the unexplained mysteries of the world, and provided information to the viewer as to how to visit the places mentioned in the program. The subject matter included lost technology and civilizations, pyramids, comparative religions, unexplained architecture, and psychic phenomena. The show was financially successful for the broadcasters, airing reruns for 8 years, from 1996 to 2002 in the US on PBS, as well as in Canada on Vision TV, The Life Channel, The Learning Channel, and CTV Travel.

Digital Photography
While we were collecting footage for our travel series, we shot a lot of photography on 35mm film. When the PhotoCD format was invented by Kodak, a CD manufacturer asked us to create the first royalty free images of the world on CD-ROM that could be bundled with new computers and sold in stores. That product became known as “WorldPhoto Essentials Image Library” and millions of copies where sold all over the world.