College of Visual and Performing Arts Dean bruce d. mcclung has announced the appointment of Bryan McAdams as Visiting Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre.
Bryan McAdams is a music director, keyboardist, pop/rock producer, composer, vocal coach, and professor. His professional credits include Rock Of Ages Las Vegas (Original Music Director/Keyboardist), Rock Of Ages National Tour (Music Director/Keyboardist), Tenors of Rock at Harrah’s on the Las Vegas strip (Original Music Director/Keyboardist), the Broadway National Tours of Grease with Taylor Hicks and Lauren Ashley Zakrin (Associate Conductor/Keys) and Billy Elliot, three separate International Tours of Grease, and most recently the NYC National Tour Workshop of Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries (Original Music Director/ Keys). He is currently music directing the upcoming production of Million Dollar Quartet at Shenandoah Summer Theatre.
McAdams has performed in forty-nine states as well as in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Lebanon, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Additionally, he has music directed over thirty off-Broadway, regional, and university productions and has had original music premiered at Lincoln Center (NYC), Harvard University, Dixon Place (NYC), The Theatre Building (Chicago), and Festival56 (Princeton, Illinois). McAdams has music directed rock bands in iconic New York venues such as CBGB, Arlene’s Grocery, The Triad, and Le Bar Bat and has worked as a session keyboardist and independent producer in Midtown Manhattan.
As a professor of musical theatre, McAdams has been on faculty at Western Carolina University as well as the University of Mississippi where he was the recipient of the Cora Lee Graham Award for Outstanding Teaching of Freshmen.
McAdams is a classically trained pianist and holds a Batchelor of Music (BM) from Berklee College of Music. He also studied drama at The Boston Conservatory.
