MA Top 30 Professional: Adrian Anantawan

Artistic Director, Shelter Music Boston
Music Chair, Milton Academy
Founder, Music Inclusion Ensemble, Berklee College of Music

Adrian Anantawan is busy. He chairs the music department at Milton Academy and serves as artistic director of Shelter Music Boston, a nonprofit providing some 80 live music opportunities to unhoused Bostonites annually.

Earlier this year, he took on yet another responsibility, founding Berklee College’s Berklee Music Inclusion Ensemble, the first ensemble at a major conservatory to make accessibility for disabled musicians central to its mission.

The topic is personal for Anantawan, 40: The Thai-Chinese-Canadian violinist and Curtis grad was born without much of his right forearm. He still plays as a soloist and with ensembles like A Far Cry, aided since childhood by an artificial bow holder attached to his arm through a cast. He was the subject of an hour-long documentary
about his life in 2008.

“I went through the conservatory process and emerged the other side in a professional context, but I always felt like there was a bit of a dissonance in how I could express my identity in the context of disability. I was always working in a two-handed world and was successful because I could, in some ways, participate in that environment of the able-bodied,” Anantawan says. “It led me to see where younger conservatory students are at in terms of their access needs.”

That access, in some cases, means changing how rehearsals are run and structured. Some of the students in the ensemble are neurodiverse—while their disabilities may not be visible, the way they process and internalize repertoire may differ from usual conservatory practice.

“They need a little bit more time to learn the repertoire; they need accessible formats,” Anantawan says. 

For the ensemble’s inaugural season, it worked with violinist Gaelynn Lea, a composer, singer, and violinist with brittle bone disease whose Tiny Desk Concert for NPR was an overnight sensation, and Molly Joyce, a composer with a left-hand injury who now works prolifically in the music disability space.