Composer, arranger, orchestrator, and multi-instrumentalist Calder Adkins has never been one to settle for focusing on only one aspect of music. A 2023 graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Calder has spent the recent months working on a variety of projects, concerts, and events as a music director, music supervisor, arranger, composer, transcriber, copyist, and/or performer at Berklee and around Boston.

Calder has been a multi-instrumentalist most of his life. After beginning on cello in the third grade, he added alto sax in grade four, and slowly and steadily built up his arsenal of instruments! By middle school, Calder had developed an affinity for all types of music and was active in string orchestra, wind ensemble, jazz band, and various choral and theater groups, while also playing drums in a rock band, and singing in church choirs. Influenced by his dad’s classic rock taste for artists like Peter Frampton and Rush, and his mom’s taste for Madonna and anything disco, Calder gravitated towards everything from Phantom of the Opera to Lady Gaga.

It was also around this time that Calder began to realize his love for arranging and composing. After receiving his own laptop and a copy of Sibelius notation software for Christmas when he was 12, Calder learned as he went along – both in how to write, and how to work around Sibelius – by simply clicking notes into the score and hearing the computer play them back. Later that year, he surprised his orchestra teacher with an arrangement of an original song his rock band had written about a taco...and it wound up closing out the spring concert that year!

Calder has always been drawn to musical theater as well, a seed that was planted after his family watched the Donny Osmond Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat TV movie. As soon as he was old enough to join school productions, he jumped at the chance...but soon realized that his interests lied more in the music end of things. He logged hundreds of volunteer hours performing in pit bands for local theaters, and coincidentally, his first paid gig was playing drums for a local production of Joseph!

Since coming to Berklee in 2019, Calder has been fortunate to learn from the industry’s best. He has studied saxophone with Jackie Beard and Edmar Colón, composition with Brian Buch, arranging with Jeri Sykes and Tsunenori “Lee” Abe, piano with Ben Cook (The Boston Pops), and conducting with fifty-year veteran of Broadway pits Eric Stern.

Calder has a wealth of experience as a composer, arranger, and orchestrator, having created charts for independent artists, student clubs, and professionally-produced concerts at the Berklee Performance Center including tributes to Taylor Swift, Elton John, and The Police. He is available for in-person and remote session work as well as arranging, composing, transcribing, and score preparing.