Hello. I'm Stephen Van Doren, &

I'm the voice your ears are looking for.

Short-form, long-form, in-person or recorded.

About me

How it sounds matters a lot.

I get it. You need a voice that elevates your project, one that stands in front and grabs the attention of all ears, one that implores all listeners to take a moment and consider what they're hearing. It's a busy, busy world out there, and you need to appeal to all the senses available to you.

I'm Stephen Van Doren. I live in beautiful Denver, Colorado, where I was born & raised, and I have a passion for quality voice work. Too often the voiceover aspect of a project takes a back seat to the visual, completely forgetting all those times we've had our passions inflamed by a particularly well-spoken phrase. It's often thought that high quality voiceover work is too expensive, either in time or money. I am happy to work with you to figure out an appropriate value I can bring to your project. We're all stuck in this late-stage capitalist nightmare, we don't have to make it harder on each other.

Services

AUDIOBOOKS

I've narrated hundreds of titles for the National Library Service (Library of Congress), with a focus on historical nonfiction, science-fiction, children's & YA novels, and fantasy. I also have growing numbers of commercial titles in Audible and free/public domain titles on my YouTube channel.

EMCEE/PRESENTER

Whether you have a full script you want me to present word-for-word, a set of bullet points you'd prefer me to incorporate into a script, or just have a few major themes you want me to touch on and prefer a more intimate, audience-based presentation, I am flexible to meet the demands of your live events, whether in-person (contact me for details on travel) or digitally broadcast.

VOICEOVER

Maybe you just need a few paragraphs or sentences read to be periodically broadcast. Perhaps you have an entire script for your next documentary or long-form video essay. Radio dramas (or their modern reinterpretations) are steadily making a comeback, and I for one welcome it! It's not all serious reading, I do voices & accents, too!

Recent Recordings

Below you'll find some recent performances of the Mile High Freedom Bands and others that I have emceed (more links available at the bottom for videos that will not embed nicely), as well as some of my favorites from my YouTube channel, Vocal Classics.

H.P. Lovecraft's introduction to his nightmarish Cthulhu mythos: Dagon.
A bit of Star Trek fan fiction here, the second book of the Edge of Midnight series, written by John Conagh.
One of my favorite essays ever written, "Economy" from Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, speaks to my soul, and giving voice to this work has been sheer pleasure.
A recent large gathering of LGBTQ+ bands from around the world recently came to Denver, Colorado. I was asked to emcee their three performances, culminating in this incredible experience at the Elie Caulkins Opera House.
EW Hornung may not be that popular these days, but his series of gentleman thief stories featuring AJ Raffles and his accomplice, Bunny, are some of the most entertaining stories put to paper in the early 20th Century. I've narrated many of them, and here's one of my favorites.
Everyone loves Alice in Wonderland, right? What more can be said about this classic that "Down the Rabbit Hole" doesn't answer?

Recording Technology

My home studio features the Neumann TLM 103 condenser microphone, powered by an Apollo Twin interface to a Mac OSX computer. There, I tend to use REAPER as a main digital recording studio. After recording, I process the audio using SOUND FORGE Audio Studio to meet the quality requirements of the given project.

For video, depending on the situation, I can provide green-screened 1920x1080 HD video from a Logitech BRIO camera, or from a Samsung S23 ULTRA mobile camera, supplemented by TASCAM-recorded boom audio.

For in-person events, my standard modus operandii is to not upstage what I am there to present, so tend to wear muted colors, preferably black, with colorful accents and flowing fabrics. I am just as happy in a suit, should the occasion call for tails.

Contact

I'm not at very active on social media, but below you can find links to my Twitter and YouTube accounts. Please feel free to reach out by email, as well. svandoren@gmail.com