Adryan Russ
Composer & Lyricist
About
Adryan was born into a family that valued education and music. There was a grand piano in the house from the day she was born. She grew up listening to classical music as well as pop, rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and, of course, the blues – she’s from Chicago. Earning a master’s degree in English with a minor in music from the University of Illinois, she traveled to New York, where she saw Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, which changed her life. “I wanted to write songs like those,” she says.
Music
After joining the Peace Corps, working with schools for two years in Medellín, Colombia, learning to love the cumbia and play guitar with fellow volunteers and a wonderful Colombian family, she returned to the U.S. and saw an ad in the Los Angeles Times for songwriters who love musicals to join the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop, later known as the BMI Workshop. Submitted and accepted, she met playwright Doug Haverty, with whom she has since co-written the off-Broadway musical Inside Out, which has played theaters across the U.S., in Switzerland and Belgrade, Serbia; and also iGhost, a musicalized spin on Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost; and Love Again, a trilogy of three short musicals. She co-wrote The Right Is Ours! with Lloyd J. Schwartz, best known for The Brady Bunch/Gilligan’s Island.
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