Ryan Beard is currently Instrumental Music Editor at the Neil A. Kjos Music Company in San Diego, California, a position he’s held since 2000. A native San Diegan, Ryan began his music studies while in elementary school and continued throughout high school in the public school system. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Composition from The Cleveland Institute of Music and the Indiana University (Bloomington) Jacobs School of Music respectively. He was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra to write a celebratory overture for that group’s tenth anniversary. The Cleveland Plain Dealer hailed it as “an effective essay with ardent gestures and open-hearted lyricism, but with an atmospheric sense all [its] own.” Additional praise from Mrs. Erin Kole’s (Ryan’s sister) 7th grade English class at Thurgood Marshall Middle School (San Diego, CA) states that “Mr. Beard must be a very skilled composer” because he “made it possible for a bassoon to play with the cello and viola.”

Active as a performer and conductor, Ryan is principal French horn with the La Jolla Symphony, as well as its librarian. He has performed with Orchestra Nova (formerly the San Diego Chamber Orchestra), San Diego Symphony, San Diego Opera, and Classics Philharmonia. In 2019 and 2022, he was a Fellow in the Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive workshop where he studied under Angel Velez, Jorge Mester, Conrad Pope, and William Ross. He has conducted ensembles across the USA and Europe in performances of his own works. He has also conducted numerous musicals with theater companies across southern California. Most recently, he conducted the San Diego Academy of Ballet’s 2023 production of The Nutcracker.

For most of his professional life, Ryan has worked for Disneyland, the San Diego Padres, and LEGO Systems, Inc. In other words, the money he makes eventually goes to one of those organizations. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys reading crime novels, science fiction, books about real-life science (particularly astronomy and physics), spending time with his wife Coreena and their retired racing greyhound “Jess,” and committing one-liners from Frasier to memory.