Since the turn of the 20th century, Dayton, Ohio has been home to inventors and innovation. In that same spirit, Michael & Sandy Bashaw create original and innovative music and art.

As artists, the Bashaws perform, compose, teach and create art in many different configurations and venues: They work together as a duet, collaborating on song composition and film scores, as well as live performance. Their “Puzzle of Light” ensemble includes a bass player and percussionist. For special events, college concerts and performing arts venues they present the “Theatre of Sound” using large-scale experimental sculptural instruments (“Sound Sculptures”) designed and built by Michael. See their web site for more information, and additional CDs.

Michael & Sandy composed the music for the documentary Dayton Codebreakers, for producer/director Aileen LeBlanc. It was a great personal and professional experience, and they are proud to be a part of the project. They have expanded the songs heard in the film for the soundtrack CD, Music from the documentary, Dayton Codebreakers.  Instrumentation on this CD is:  Michael - flutes, piano, marxophone, percussion, toy horn and Sound Sculptures;  Sandy - guitars, piano, koto and Sound Sculptures.  It was co-produced by composer Dino Zonic. 

Track Listing

1. Codebreakers Opening Theme (3:48)

2.  Joe’s Neighborhood (2:48)

3.  Industrial Piano (3:53)

4.  Lament (3:12)

5.  Bombe Machine (5:32) LISTEN TO THIS SONG

6.  Japanese Flute (2:27)

7.  Swing Thing (1:53)

8.  Mournful Flute (4:57)

9.  Koto (2:24)

10. Navy Hymn (2:05)

11. Codebreakers Closing Theme (5:37) LISTEN TO A SAMPLE

About the documentary The Dayton Codebreakers

One thousand, one hundred sixty American ships carrying supplies across the Atlantic to Britain were sunk in 1942, torpedoed by German submarines-- U-Boats--which relied upon secret underwater radio communications. The German Navy used a coding machine called Enigma to keep its maneuvers out of the Allies' reach. The British had cracked an earlier Enigma device but not this one. The US Navy, angry at failures in the British codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park, decided to take these affairs into their own hands. Thy came to Joe Desch, a self-educated man known for his innovative work on thyratrons--miniature quick-firing tubes--at the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio. Desch, a civilian of German descent, was under surveillance himself even as he worked.

Desch and his team countered the Enigma with an advanced version of the British Bombe, a machine that would shorten the war, thereby saving the lives of combatants on all sides. But the pressure on Desch as he worked on this top secret mission, equal in secrecy to the Manhattan Project, would take its toll. He struggled with the moral consequences of his work--the deaths of thousands of young men.