Conrad Askland

Conrad Askland is a music producer and keyboardist. His educational and live performance experience covers an extremely wide range of styles and formats.

His formal music studies include Pacific Lutheran University (Composition and Voice), the University of Miami (Music Law), the Cornish Institute, the Seattle Early Music Guild and UCLA School of Film Scoring.

Conrad has extensive experience in live performance as a pianist for Knott's Berry Farm, 4 years as touring keyboardist with Grammy Winner Freddy Fender of the Texas Tornados, vocalist with the Seattle Opera, touring keyboardist for Roy Rogers Jr., performances at the House of Blues and Prince Hotels (Tokyo), the Grand 'Ol Opry and as a keyboardist with various Southern California and Las Vegas show groups. He has also toured extensively throughout Europe, Asia and Japan and the United States. Conrad has also performed in England, France, Denmark, Wales, Holland, South Korea, Tokyo, Okinawa and Hiroshima.

As a musical director and/or conductor he has worked full time with such diverse groups as San Bernardino Summer Theater Festival, National Educator's Conference and Hollywood Superstars. He has over 2,000 performances to his credit and also works as a freelance musical director.

In addition to scoring and composing for the albums he produces at Road Records he has composed and arranged for corporate entities including GTE and Contel, World Library Publications and United Airlines. He currently composes ongoing for nearly two dozen corporate clients at Road Records as well as producing commercial artist albums.

Originally from the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, WA, this Los Angeles area composer and arranger lives in the high desert of Southern California in Victorville.

Askland works as pianist and keyboardist for a variety of shows and his strongest styles are Stride Piano, Honkey Tonk, Classical, New Age, Country "Floyd Cramer" style, Southern Gospel and Big Band Swing and has often been compared to fellow piano players Harry Connick Jr., the Nashville country piano players of Little Feat and New Age artist Yanni.

Conrad engineers most of the projects at the studio and has also engineered many of the Road Records recording artists. His specialty is the wealth of theory and application knowledge he can apply to projects from classical orchestration to modern dance and techno. Most people would find him to be a strong believer in free speech for the arts and extremely passionate about his work.

Conrad is also very active in field recording and audio research. He currently composes and produces music for clients worldwide and is always creating new audio products for distribution.

Background - Formative Studies
Conrad Askland comes from a very strict and musical Norwegian family. His grandmother a touring jazz pianist in the 1930's, his grandfather a touring jazz sax player, and his father an amateur opera singer.

As a child he was surrounded by strictly classical and Broadway music, not listening to pop music until in his teens. He started school late for health reasons, had difficulty relating to peers because of the age difference and quickly immersed himself in scholastic studies at an early age. His interest in music was very apparent.

At age 8 he enrolled in the Northwest Boys Choir, an extremely strict regime at the time focusing on early music in Latin and Baroque/Classical music, very similiar to the Vienna Boys Choir. This was the beginning of his intense music studies. The group traveled throughout Europe performing at major cathedrals and regularly performed with the Seattle Symphony and other classical music groups. This led to inclusion as a regular vocalist with the Seattle Opera chorus and eventually a lead role with the Seattle Opera. Performing in a boys' choir was not generally accepted by his peers and he delved further into full time music studies.

At age 9 Conrad began piano studies with the church organist. He was passed on to a concert pianist instructor at age 12 and continued to take from various teachers through college. At this time he was also beginning to reduce orchestral scores on the piano and learning opera scores to accompany himself for vocal practice.

At age 10 he began French Horn which he studied until college and was enrolled regularly in the Honors Youth Orchestra and High School Orchestra. He took regular lessons from the 1st chair french horn of the Seattle Symphony, and was exposed to an incredible amount of orchestral music through the instrument. In college he was limited to the number of instruments he could enroll in and decided to give up french horn.

At age 12 he began studying bass guitar, playing in the jr. high and high school jazz bands. Although not an incredible player, it gave him another perspective on music theory, jazz voicings and probably accounts for his incredibly strong and quick left hand on the piano.

Through high school he took private composition lessons at the Cornish Institue in Seattle, private voice lessons with classical recitals, was a regular solo vocalist and keyboard performer at his Lutheran church, perfomed with the Seattle Chorus and involved in regular music camp studies at St. Olaf and other colleges, and was a regular pianist on staff at Nordstrom. He strongly disliked being in high school and graduated 2 years early from Interlake High School at the age of 16 with 4 honors including academic scholarship.

At age 16 he entered immediately into summer school at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wa for a major in composition and minor in vocal performance. By 17 he had tested into Junior level standing and was studying and performing in all top groups.

At 18 Conrad began playing piano for Nordstrom in Bellevue, WA and began circulating with performance groups. At 21 he studied copyright law and international finance at the University of Miami and later relocated to Victorville, CA. Although Victorville may seem an unlikely place for music production, it lies half way between Las Vegas and Los Angeles which provided easy access to performance venues during his early studies.

His methods are sometimes unconventional, doing whatever it takes to bring musical productions "full circle" to completion. He continues his studies to this day with classes and heavy reading.