Uel Wade
Pianist
Uel Wade graduated from Calvin College with a double major in music and math, having studied piano with Sherman van Solkema. He did graduate work at the University of Michigan School of Music, where he also taught music theory and served as staff accompanist. While at the U of M, he studied piano with Robert Hord and with fellow grad student Joseph Banowetz. After a detour as an IBM systems analyst, Wade began a sixteen-year career as pianist, music director, and conductor in New York City’s Broadway and Off Broadway. During and between shows, he arranged for and/or accompanied many stars of the period including Barbara Cook, Liv Ullmann, Robert Guillaume, and Martin Charnin. Locally, he has prepared the choruses of the Berkshire Opera Company and the Berkshire Bach Society and served as Musical Director / Conductor of the Berkshire Theater Festival and the Berkshire Lyric Theater. With the Spencertown Academy, he sponsors the annual Uel Wade Scholarship in which high-school age musicians compete for substantial dollars to put toward their music studies. In “retirement” he accompanies many singers and instrumentalists, and teaches piano in his studio in Chatham, NY.