Jan Powell has served as musical director in the professional theater for more than 30 years and has conducted 250+ musical productions. He has also conducted main stage shows at University of Southern California and UCLA where he has served as an instructor in musical theater, audition technique and vocal production during the Summer Institute program. He is an ASCAP member and winner of numerous ASCAP Special Awards and has been a performing member of Actors Equity Association. Powell composed music for Tom Huey's It Ain'' the Heat, It's the Humility, which was published as one of the 10 Best Short Plays of 1982, and he has written the music and lyrics for a musical adaptation of The Ugly Duckling, published by Dramatic Publishing. Overland, his first full-length musical drama written in collaboration with Ken Stone, was the Grand Prize winner of the 1989 American Musical Theater Festival contest for new musicals and has received main stage productions in Kansas City and at the Newtuners Theater in Chicago. His second collaboration with Stone, Trask & Fenn, premiered in Chicago in the fall of 1992 winning a Jefferson Citation nomination in the New Works category. Recent work as musical director includes Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience & Trial by Jury for the Antaeus Workshop at the Mark Taper Forum, the musical director for Patience with the Antaeus Company Inside at the Ford, Legal Briefs with the Antaeus Company at the Ivy Substation and Mother Courage and Her Children at New Place Theater with the Antaeus Company. He is a performing member of The Antaeus Company. He was musical director and conductor for the 2005 world premiere of Rosenstrasse with the Company Rep at Deaf West Theatre and performed 15 weeks as musical director and pianist for The Threepenny Opera at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble as well as arranging and directing the music for the Theatre Works LA/Antaeus Company production of A Tale of Charles Dickens for radio broadcast on NPR's The Play's the Thing. He has worked with Kay Cole as musical director of the hit off-Broadway show Inside Out. Powell, along with his collaborators Ken Stone and John Sparks, was commissioned by the Frederick Loewe Trust through the National Alliance for Musical Theatre to compose the music for a stage adaptation of G.B. Shaw's Cashel Byron's Profession. The Ballad of Tom Dooley with book writer Brenda Lilly and lyricist Ken Stone was developed with a generous NEA grant through the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in Los Angeles, the New Tuners Theatre of Chicago and North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Mass. The Ballad of Tom Dooley was invited to perform at the Cardiff Festival and received its world premiere in 2010 at Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville, N.C. Powell was one of the first elected representatives on the Member Advisory Board for the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. He has served as musical director and vocal arranger for Marshall Mason on William Hoffman's play Riga produced by Venture West Theater and composed original songs for James Barrie's The Ugly Duckling with the Antaeus Company. Powell has served as the musical director three times for A.S.K. Theater Projects' Nautilus Workshop Composers Studio under the direction of Ben Krywosz and has worked as musical director and composer with the Virginia Avenue Project under the direction of Leigh Curran. He worked as musical director for two episodes of ABC Family Channel's "State of Grace" and composed an original song for an episode of the CBS show, "The District" with collaborator Patricia Green. Again with his award-winning collaborator, Ken Stone, Powell's music was heard in the new musical American Tales which premiered in Los Angeles 2008, once again with the Antaeus Company at Deaf West Theatre. Subsequently, American Tales is currently published by Samuel French. Other
