Ryan Bell McAdams (born March 16, 1982) is an American conductor and currently the 15th Music Director of the New York Youth Symphony.
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Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he was twice a student at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. After graduating from Clayton High School, McAdams began his undergraduate studies in 2000 at Indiana University as a piano student of Dr. Karen Shaw. McAdams graduated with an B.M. in Piano Performance in 2004.
Upon graduating from Indiana University, he became the first Masters Student to be accepted into the Juilliard Conducting Studies program by James DePreist, and was awarded the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship. McAdams graduated with a M.M. in Orchestral Conducting in 2007.
During the summers of 2005-06, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and School as a student at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen where he studied with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin. He participated in master classes with Marin Alsop, George Manahan, Leonard Slatkin, Asher Fisch, and James Conlon. McAdams became the first-ever recipient of the Festival's Aspen-Glimmerglass Prize for Opera and Vocal Conducting, nominated by both David Zinman and Glimmerglass Opera. In 2008, he was appointed the Assistant Conductor for the Aspen Music Festival. In the summer of 2009, he was one of three Conducting Fellows at the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he studied with conductors James Levine and Stefan Asbury.
in 2006, he received a Fulbright Grant for Stockholm, Sweden, where he spent the year serving as Apprentice Conductor to the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, studying and traveling with then-Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert. In the spring of 2007, he was invited by Lorin Maazel to create the post of Apprentice Conductor for the Chateauville Foundation at the Maazel Estate in Virginia. As a result of the Aspen-Glimmerglass Prize, he served as Assistant Conductor for Glimmerglass Opera's 2007 season.
In 2007, McAdams was named the 15th Music Director of the New York Youth Symphony. He made his Carnegie Hall debut on December 9, 2007 with the New York Youth Symphony and violin soloist William Harvey. During the 2007-2008 season, McAdams' conducting appearances included performances with the New Jersey Symphony, Glimmerglass Opera, Rutgers University, and the Juilliard FOCUS! Festival. He also served as cover conductor to David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony at Carnegie Hall in performances of Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie and the U.S. Premiere of John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony, and served as assistant conductor to Anne Manson at the Juilliard Opera Center for the New York Premiere of Ned Rorem's Our Town, in addition to his three Carnegie Hall appearances with the New York Youth Symphony. He served as Assistant Conductor for the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and in Philadelphia's Zellerbach Theater. In 2008, he served as the Assistant Conductor for the Aspen Music Festival.
In the 2008-9 season, McAdams appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic,Princeton Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Wordless Music Series (NYC), and Carnegie Hall with the New York Youth Symphony.
McAdams made his European debut with the Maggio Musicale Orchestra in Florence in February, 2010, and was reinvited for subscription concerts in 2012. He will return to Italy in 2011 for concerts with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Della RAI in Turino. He made his American opera debut with the New York City Opera in the spring of 2010, and was named Associate Conductor of the NYCO two months later. He made his Eastern European debut in Dubrovnik, Croatia with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in September 2010. In October, he conducted the world premiere of Jonathan Dawe's opera "Cracked Orlando" at the Italian Academy in New York, starring Anthony Roth Costanzo.
In the summer of 2010, he became the first-ever recipient of the Sir Georg Solti Emerging Conductor Award, a $10,000 prize given by the Solti Foundation in Chicago.[1]