Meet Adam

“Wachter’s songwriting and storytelling pop with invention.”

— James Hebert, The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Adam Wachter’s astute musical direction deliver[s] every nuance of the glorious score.”

— Aileen Jacobson, The New York Times

“Music director Adam Wachter is a breakout star.”

— Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter

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Short Bio

Adam Wachter's varied body of work includes experience as a composer, lyricist, music director, pianist, author, and educator, and the Hollywood Reporter called him a “breakout star" for his music direction (and quips) on the Disney+ series “Encore!”. Adam was the recipient of the 2018 Stiles & Drewe Prize and the 2021 MAC John Wallowitch Award for songwriting, and his original musical Tarrytown won the 2017 San Diego Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Musical and was a top-ten finalist for the 2019 Richard Rodgers Award. He composed the ballet "On Lincoln Square", which premiered at the Vail Dance Festival as the choreographic debut of Tiler Peck, the song “3 People” (performed by Mandy Patinkin, Anika Noni Rose, Stephen Colbert, Shoshana Bean, and others as a get-out-the-vote anthem in 2020), and wrote both the score and screenplay for the award-winning short film “Sign”, directed by Andrew Keenan-Bolger. Adam wrote the songs “Feel This Fall” for CBS’s Fall 2021 TV season announcement and “A Broadway Musical” for the cast of “Ghosts”’s 2022 CBS Upfronts presentation, and he has created music for the series “Wacky Races,” “Cheat Sheet for the Voting Booth,” “The Battery’s Down,” and “Submissions Only”. His music-directing credits include the New York productions of Old Jews Telling Jokes, Carrie, Unlock’d, and Yank!, as well as shows at regional theaters throughout the U.S., including the Old Globe, Signature Theatre, Barrington Stage, Shakespeare Theatre, Bay Street, Pittsburgh CLO, The Wallis Annenberg, Weston Playhouse, and more. His Broadway keyboard credits include War Paint, Allegiance, Finding Neverland, and The Addams Family, and he has accompanied numerous top performers in concerts all over the world. In 2024, Adam’s first book, “Your Rep Book: How to Find, Choose, and Prepare Successful Audition Songs”, was published by Bloomsbury imprint Methuen Drama. Adam received a BTA from the University of Michigan (2021 “Emerging Artist” Alumni Award) and an MA from Goldsmiths, University of London, and is currently on the musical theatre faculty of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Visit adamwachter.com to learn more.

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Long Bio

Adam Wachter is an award-winning composer, lyricist, music director, arranger, orchestrator, and pianist, and can be seen in six episodes of the Disney+ series “Encore!”, produced and hosted by Kristen Bell. Adam’s song "You and Me" won the 2018 Stiles + Drewe Prize for Best New Song, and his original ballet On Lincoln Square premiered at the Vail Dance Festival and the Kennedy Center featuring NYCBallet's Tiler Peck in her debut as a choreographer. His original musical Tarrytown, a modern-day adaptation of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” for which Adam wrote music, book, and lyrics, had its world premiere production at Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company in San Diego and won the 2017 San Diego Critics' Circle Craig Noel Award for Best New Musical. James Hebert of the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote, in his review, "Wachter makes it work pretty wonderfully, with a lyrical and gracefully flowing score, often witty lyrics and a savvy way of updating Irving’s characters without shoehorning them into some contrived-feeling story." Tarrytown presented a reading under the auspices of MCC Theatre, directed by two-time Tony nominee Michael Arden and starring Jeremy Jordan, Krysta Rodriguez, and Andy Mientus. That cast recorded the show’s studio album, orchestrated by Brian Usifer, which was released in 2020 as a benefit for the Actors Fund’s COVID relief efforts. Adam's musical Sundown Town premiered in 2018 at the Tristan Bates Theater in London's West End, and concerts of Adam's original music and lyrics were produced in New York at 54 Below and in Los Angeles at Rockwell Table & Stage. His first commissioned work, an original musical titled Cast Party, premiered in March 2020 as the spring musical of the Chautauqua Lake Central High School.

The 2016 short film “Sign,” for which Adam wrote both score and screenplay, made its world premiere in the summer of 2016 in the OutFest LGBT Film Festival in Los Angeles. It went on to screen in over thirty film festivals all over the world, winning several prizes including the Youth Jury Award at the Iris Prize Festival, Best Narrative Short at NewFest, and the jury award for Best Short at Shout!, among others. Adam also produced the film along with director Andrew Keenan-Bolger. His original children’s audio musical “Denny the Dinosaur: Hear Me Roar,” written and composed with vocal arranger AnnMarie Milazzo, won the 2016 Parents’ Choice Award for Storytelling and is licensed for performance by Broadway Licensing. In 2013, he completed his first full-length film score on Jake Wilson’s comedy “Are You Joking.” Also in 2013, he orchestrated the score for the PBS Great Performances documentary “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy” directed by Michael Kantor (“Make ‘Em Laugh,” “Broadway: The American Musical”). He also composed and orchestrated the theme song and score for the smash hit web series “Submissions Only” and several pieces of score for Sour Patch Kids’ “Breaking Out” YouTube campaign series.

Adam contributed several original songs to the Warner Brothers/Boomerang reboot of the classic animated series "Wacky Races", created the theme and all the music for Ilana Glazer’s political web series “Cheat Sheet for the Voting Booth”, and wrote the song “Feel This Fall” for CBS’s 2021 Fall Television season announcement. He is also the music producer for The Battery Company’s series of online shorts and was responsible for supervising all music on both seasons of the cult favorite YouTube series “The Battery’s Down,” which featured new songs by Broadway’s top composers, including Tom Kitt (Next To Normal), Jeanine Tesori (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Shrek), and Lisa Lambert (The Drowsy Chaperone), in addition to composing additional songs himself. He composed a new song and original scoring for a special reunion episode of “The Battery’s Down,” which premiered on Hulu in November of 2015. For MTV’s pilot “Making It,” a musical reality series, he created and produced new arrangements of songs by Beyoncé, Demi Lovato, and Coldplay.

Adam was responsible for the arrangements and musical supervision for the long-running Off Broadway hit Old Jews Telling Jokes and subsequently supervised the popular production at the Royal George Theater in Chicago, for which he also provided orchestrations. He conducted the critically-lauded Unlock’d at the Duke Theater on 42nd Street, and he previously provided music direction on several other Off- and Off-Off- Broadway productions, including Yank! (York Theater), In Transit (Primary Stages), Danny Visconti is Hill-bent, and Jason & Ben. His arrangements and orchestrations for Perfect Harmony, Perez Hilton Saves The Universe, and Spidermusical are currently licensed with production rights to those shows across the country, and each featured Adam as Music Director in its original New York production.

Regionally, Adam has worked as a Music Director at many of the nation’s top theaters, including the world premiere of Dog and Pony at the Old Globe (directed by Roger Rees), Girlstar at the Signature Theatre (for which he also wrote Vocal Arrangements), director Michael Arden's productions of My Fair Lady at Bay Street Theater and Merrily We Roll Along at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (NAACP Theatre Award nomination, Best Music Director), and musicals at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Barrington Stage Company, Pittsburgh CLO, North Shore Music Theater, Northern Stage, Weston Playhouse, and Theatre-by-the-Sea, among others. He served as Music Director at the O’Neill Theater Center’s 2011 Cabaret Conference and also on TheatreworksUSA’s national tour of We The People, and recently acted as Music Supervisor on a new immersive production of Carrie in Los Angeles.

For “Glee”’s Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, Adam created arrangements, orchestrations, and provided musical direction for their “True Colors Cabaret” at Feinstein’s in late 2009. He has written arrangements and/or orchestrations for many other benefits, including a Miscast benefit for MCC Theater at the Hammerstein Ballroom, Lincoln Center's 2017 Spring Gala, and multiple editions of Broadway Backwards at the Hirschfield Theater. For four years, 2014-2017, Adam helped create annual musical numbers for NYC’s Mayor Bill de Blasio's appearances in the annual Inner Circle Show. He also orchestrated and produced the music for the opening numbers of the 2010 Streamy Awards and the 2011 Writers Guild Awards East, performed by Kristen Schaal (“30 Rock,” “The Daily Show”).

As a pianist, Adam performed in the pit orchestras of Broadway’s War Paint, Finding Neverland, Allegiance, and The Addams Family, Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular, Madison Square Garden’s Peter Pan, and MCC Theater’s Carrie, for which he is heard playing on the original cast recording on Ghostlight Records. In concert, he has accompanied Grammy-winning country superstar Trisha Yearwood at Avery Fisher Hall, Tony-winner Karen Olivo at Feinstein’s, Tony-winner Kelli O’Hara at Le Poisson Rouge, Tony-winner Celia Keenan-Bolger at Ars Nova, and countless others, including Lance Bass, Brent Barrett, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Matt Cavenaugh, Liz Callaway, Marc Kudisch, Melissa Errico, Norm Lewis, Stephanie Block, Adam Chanler-Berat, Caissie Levy, and “American Idol”’s Melinda Doolittle.

Adam is a member of the Associated Federation of Musicians (Local 802), Mensa, Dramatists Guild, and ASCAP as both a writer and publisher through his company Contumacious Creatures Music. He graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Music with a Bachelor of Theatre Arts (and received the school’s 2021 “Emerging Artist Alumni” Award), and received an MA with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London. Adam previously taught musical theatre at LAMDA in London and Point Park University in Pittsburgh, and is currently on the musical theatre faculty of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. He can be found online at adamwachter.com and is represented by Rachel Ellicott at Paradigm Talent Agency.

Résumé

Member: Local 802 AFM, ASCAP, Dramatists Guild

Recipient of the 2018 Stiles + Drewe Prize
Bachelor of Theatre Arts, University of Michigan, School of Music
Master of Arts with distinction, Goldsmiths, University of London

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Television, Film, and Web

Broadway

Off-Broadway

Original Theatrical Works

TARRYTOWN | Original Book, Music, & Lyrics | Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company | Winner: San Diego Critics' Circle’s Craig Noel Award “Best New Musical", Finalist: Richard Rodgers Award
HOME FREE | Original Book, Music, & Lyrics | Top Four Finalist: Stiles + Drewe Mentorship Prize
LINCOLN SQUARE | Original Music | Vail Dance Festival / The Kennedy Center | Chor: Tiler Peck
ANY MINUTE NOW | Original Book, Music, & Lyrics | In Development
CAST PARTY | Original Book, Music, & Lyrics | Chautauqua Lake Central School District
THE SONGS OF ADAM WACHTER | Composer/Lyricist | 54 Below (NYC), Rockwell Table & Stage (LA)
SUNDOWN TOWN | Original Book, Music, & Lyrics | Tristan Bates Theatre (London)
ZIONSVILLE | Original Book, Music, & Lyrics | Raymond Laine Memorial One Acts Festival (Pittsburgh)

Regional Theater (select credits)

Readings & Workshops (select credits)

National Tours

HAPPY DAYS | Associate Conductor, Keyboard 2 | Dir: Gordon Greenberg
WE THE PEOPLE | Music Director | Theatreworks USA

Concerts & Benefits (select credits)

Educational

*denotes designated sub