Ian Chan has a to-do list that can excite you.

Currently, he is Music Assistant for the pre-Broadway workshop of SMASH: The Musical with jobs as Score Supervisor for The Heart of Rock and Roll (Broadway, opening April 2024) and Music Director / Arranger for Julia Riew at Joe’s Pub (The Public Theater, July 2024) not far behind.

He just came off serving as Rehearsal Pianist / Music Assistant for 1776 (2022 Broadway Revival).

Oh yes, and he is working on his own musical, OUT: An Asian American Musical where he serves as Composer, Orchestrator, Music Director/Conductor.

“Neither of my parents were musical at all,” he says – not realizing the irony – “but they did decide to enroll me in group music classes as a kid. Apparently, I was the only child to be able to hit the instrument on rhythm, and it was then when they thought: “Huh, maybe Ian could be a musician.”

His parents are brilliant … and correct.

Piano lessons started at four years old, then violin lessons and composition by middle school.

“I think I was so excited by the fact that you could piece all of these strange sounds together to create something so incredibly exciting,” he says, again, innocent to the irony.

College brought out his love of Musical Theater, around the time he wanted to explore passed classical and solo work. He gave his heart and soul to the musical theatre and never looked back. “It combines all the stuff that I love about my prior musical training (playing piano with others, conducting, thinking about music in architectural and creative ways) while helping bring an amazing (yet meaningful) spectacle to life.”

We spoke with this young virtuoso about his passion and his rise.

What or who were your biggest inspirations?

Too many to count! In musical theater, I have to say that I feel continuously inspired by the work of Stephen Schwartz and Jeanine Tesori most — I aspire to achieve the level of harmonic and timbral specificity that they embody in all of their work. I’m also super inspired by the music of classical composers like Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Shostakovich, who manage to combine such depth of sound and orchestration while sending an important message.

That said, I think what drives my art is the people who I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with in my life. I think about Ms. Chow, my piano teacher in Hong Kong from when I was four and five years old — who encouraged me to improvise and make my own harmonies at the piano… only after I had learnt the notes on the page correctly the first time. Or about Mr. Horner, my high school band director, who wouldn’t have section leaders in his groups — because we were all to take ownership and accountability of the music that we created — and who encouraged me to make my own arrangements of the songs I liked (mostly Nintendo video game music, back then) I wanted to play. But most of all, I think about how my artistry — and all of the things I’ve done with my life — is inextricable from my parents’ philosophy and livelihood. Though neither were musically trained in the slightest, it’d be common for them to sing little tunes and harmonies around the house — and for them to express their creativity and joie-de-vivre in all their other beautiful walks of life.

As musicians, I think it’s such a blessing that we get to be influenced by all the other elements in our lives, and I wanted to take this moment to acknowledge them 🙂

Was it the lure of Broadway that brought you to the States and to New York?

I didn’t even know I wanted to be on Broadway at all before coming to the States — I don’t think I had even seen a single show on Broadway at that point. When I got into Harvard University for college, I was fully intent on doing something very different (and probably much less creative) with my life. But it was the magic of being able to create new musical theater that definitely convinced me that I needed to stay in the United States (and specifically in New York), and I’ve been lucky enough to continue making that happen ever since!

Your rise is meteoric. What do you attribute this to?

A key thing that allowed me to do what I do now is to say yes to everything — you never really know who you’re going to meet or where it’s going to lead you next. I signed up for my very first music director project without even knowing what a music director did. I learnt on the fly and here I am! I also think it’s super important to trust yourself and your instincts — even if you’ve done the preparation work, it’s still very easy to psych yourself out, and that’s something I’ve definitely had to overcome before — but to also take everything with an open mind. There are so many opportunities to practically learn on the fly, and being a sponge and sucking up all the information that you’re surrounded with is both such a privilege and an opportunity.

Part II in Words4Culture.com