Henry Kreindler was no rock star, but you might be hard pressed to find anyone who helped define the sound of Winnipeg’s music scene in the 1980s more than he.
Kreindler owned and managed Banquox Sound, a music hub that provided audio services for many big-name acts who performed in the city during the ’80s, including Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Three Dog Night and KISS. He was also the go-to audio guy for events such as the Winnipeg Folk Festival and Folklorama, and set up sound systems in many of the city’s best-known nightclubs and churches.
His roots in the local music scene date back to the late 1960s when he played bass guitar in a couple of high school bands including one outfit known as the Pumpkin Tree. Even though Kreindler enjoyed performing, what really held his interest was the way the vocals, instruments and audio equipment combined to create a unique sound.
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Kreindler was well known for the ‘heavy’ speakers that he crafted for many local music acts.
That fascination led him to start building his own speakers in his parents’ North End garage, using some of the old carpentry tools his dad, Dov, had lying around. By the time he finished high school he was selling his handmade speakers to a number of performers and soon after turned it into a full-time enterprise that also offered audio rentals and installed PA systems for live concerts.
While his speakers were well regarded for the quality sound they produced, there was one problem: they were heavy, man, really heavy.
“People complained about how heavy they were because they were solid wood,” says his wife Catherine, laughing.
“The thing about Henry was he was very much a perfectionist … That’s why those speaker boxes were so heavy, because he wanted to make them the best speaker boxes in the world. Everything had to be just right.”
The name of Kreindler’s company was a nod to Banquo, a ghost in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, who could be neither seen nor heard by anyone except the title character. Turns out Kreindler was extremely shy as a teen and avoided answering questions in class, earning him the nickname Banquo’s Ghost. He kind of liked the tag and decided to add an X to the end of it to make it sound cooler when he was deciding on a name for his company.
Kreindler’s knowledge of sound was so respected that he went on to mentor many of the people who came up through the audio industry after him.
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Henry Kreindler (standing) with his bandmates (left to right) Greg Black, Bob Fuhr, Ben Kantorovich and Allen Hessler.
One of those people was Howard Klopak, one of the most highly-respected and in-demand live sound professionals in the country. Klopak first got to know Kreindler when he was just 15. He was playing in a band at the time and used to visit Banquox Sound’s downtown storefront, where he became fascinated with what he saw.
Kreindler helped Klopak land some audio gigs with a couple of local bands early on in his career and the two struck up a friendship that continued until the former’s death earlier this year.
Klopak says what he remembers best about his friend and mentor was his willingness to share his knowledge with others.
“He was always very sharing with information and just trying to help people who were interested in the craft of sound and live performances,” he recalls.
“He was very supportive and always trying to make things better and just try to be helpful. He enjoyed what he did and he would try and help people out anyway he could. He would always try and make me feel good about my skills. He was one of the good guys.”
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Henry Kreindler was never a big star himself but had a huge influence on the Winnipeg music scene in the 1980s as an audio expert.
Kreindler never became chummy with any of the famous performers he worked with over the years, but he did appreciate getting to see them perform up close. One particular performance that stood out was the rock band KISS’s first concert in the city in 1974. It took place at Taché Hall at the University of Manitoba and Kreindler set up the audio and PA systems for the show. This was well before the four members of the band became rock legends; a less-than-receptive audience threw beer cans at them and booed them off the stage.
Sadly, Kreindler had to pull the plug on Banquox Sound in the early ‘90s. The business had become unprofitable and he no longer had the energy to run it after suffering a heart attack at the age of 39.
All of that prompted him to reinvent himself professionally. He went back to school and studied accounting at Red River College. He did the books for a number of clients, including the Reh-Fit Centre, Momentum Health and the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre, until his retirement.
He continued to dabble in the music industry, assisting his daughter Sara, an accomplished composer, and helping with the audio system at Folklorama’s Scottish pavilion.
While music was a source of great joy for Kreindler, it was also the inspiration for a particularly fearful moment during his childhood. In 1960, he and his parents emigrated from Haifa, a city in northern Israel, to Winnipeg, where his mom, Betty, already had a sister living.
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Henry Kreindler (seated) served as the audio engineer for the Scottish pavilion at Folklorama for many years.
During a stopover in Rome, his father purchased an accordion with the intention of selling it for a profit when the family arrived at their final destination. However, customs officers in New York wanted Kreindler’s dad to pay duty on the instrument. He quickly told the officers the accordion belonged to his son. The only problem was young Henry had no idea how to play the instrument.
“Henry was in fear they were going to ask him to play it,” Catherine says, laughing.
It’s fitting that it was music that brought Kreindler and Catherine, his second wife, together. Catherine’s first husband, Dennis Ousey, and Kreindler had been friends for several years until Ousey’s death in 2005. Catherine moved to Vancouver after his death to be closer to her daughter, but stayed in touched with Kreindler through periodic phone calls and Facebook posts.
Kreindler would often share music files with her of some of his favourite songs. Their friendship moved in a decidedly different direction when he shared a song titled Beautiful Lady written by a pair of Winnipeggers.
“He said to me when he sent it to me, ‘This was written about a beautiful lady like you, Catherine.’ That was the first time I realized he was really interested in me as more than just a friend,” she says.
The couple was married for nearly 11 years prior to his death in February following a lengthy struggle with cancer.
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Kreindler working the audio board at Folklorama’s Scottish pavilion.
Catherine says one of the things that attracted her to Kreindler was his inherent kindness. She recalls being in the emergency ward at St. Boniface Hospital when a man screamed out in pain from behind a curtained-off alcove. Kreindler went to check on the man and asked him if there was anything he could do to help before fetching him a glass of water.
“I thought that showed a great deal of kindness,” she said. “That for me was an important part of his personality. I thought that really showed a respect for all human beings.”
Kreindler showed the same kind of grace through his own illness.
He was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in December 2021 and succumbed to the disease on Feb. 3, 2024 at the age of 73. One of the last things he did prior to his death was to turn his garage into a retail store so he could sell off all the audio equipment he’d acquired over the years.
It was done partly to ease the burden on Catherine after his death, but also to spend time with the many friends and colleagues he had made in the audio business over the years.
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Henry Kreindler with his wife Catherine
“As with most things that happened to him in life, he just kind of dealt with it,” Catherine says. “He didn’t let anything stop him.”
fpcity@freepress.mb.ca