RYAN SCOTT OLIVER is a 2009 Jonathan Larson Grant recipient and wrote the music and lyrics for Mrs. Sharp (2008 Richard Rodgers Award Winner, at Playwrights Horizons July 2009 starring Jane Krakowski, dir. by Michael Greif), Darling (Pace New Musicals 2009), the song cycle Out of My Head, Quit India (commissioned by UCLA), and the music for Angus Oblong's The Debbies.
A collection of his work, Rated RSO, was recently seen at New York Musical Theatre Festival and Joe's Pub, where it will return January 2010 after an engagement at Los Angeles’s Boston Court Performing Arts Center starring Megan Hilty.
His work has been heard on the hit YouTube TV show The Battery’s Down ("This is Your Life" among others) and in showcases presented by Summer Play Festival (SPF), The York Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, William Finn & Barrington Stages, New York Theatre Barn, Monday Nights New Voices, and the Festival of New American Musicals in Los Angeles.
He is a 2007 Dramatists Guild Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards including the first-ever ASCAP Foundation Harold Adamson Award for Excellence in Lyric Writing, the Margo Lion Award for Excellence in Adaptation (Mrs. Sharp, with Kirsten A. Guenther), the Looking Glass Theatre Favorite Production Award (Out of My Head) and the John Denver New Composers Award.
Originally from Los Angeles, he is currently making music from New York City's West Village, developing 35mm, a multimedia musical exhibition based on photographs by Matthew Murphy; a commission by Broadway Across America; We the People for TheatreWorksUSA (premiering Off-Broadway 2010), and preparing for a concert at the Kennedy Center through ASCAP.
B.A. Music Composition, UCLA; M.F.A. Musical Theatre Writing, NYU-Tisch, a proud member of A.S.C.A.P.; Ryan is an adjunct professor at Pace University in New York, a voice instructor at Front-n-Center Performing Arts Center in New Jersey, and Artistic Director of the Pasadena Musical Theatre Program in California, where he also teaches Songwriting, Playwriting, and Musical Theatre History.
He is represented by Jessica Amato at The Gersh Agency.
