Derrick L. Wang

Derrick L. Wang ’06 didn’t end up writing the music for the 2003 Hasty Pudding Theatricals show, “It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.”

The morning before he had to submit his original score, the then-freshman was frantically composing in a midtown Manhattan McDonald’s, still recovering from a long night on the town. The Pudding’s music director had given him the lyrics only a week earlier, but Wang had not let the deadline spoil his weekend plans.

“The stuff I brought in was not ‘Hasty Pudding,’” says Wang, flashing a characteristic grin. “It was almost perversely dissonant and difficult to sing. It probably wouldn’t have been out of place in a postmodern opera.”

Although Wang came up short in his first attempt at composing for the stage, it didn’t take long for him to strike a chord with the nation’s oldest college theatrical troupe. After co-directing and producing the freshman musical, “Get Some,” Wang went on to write scores for the 2004 and 2005 Pudding shows, “As the World Turns” and “Terms of Frontierment.”

He cites the flexibility of musical theater as one of its major draws for aspiring composers.

“It’s a [musical genre] where there’s a lot of cross-pollination. There’s the potential to use any style of music you want, as long as it fits the performance,” says Wang.

In addition to his forays into musical theatre, Wang is also a budding classical composer. Last year he was awarded the prestigious Hugh F. MacColl Prize for composition by the Department of Music, and his original piece, “Sonatina,” won the Bach Society Orchestra competition. Come next fall, Wang will pack up his keyboard and head south to Yale, where he plans to study for a Master’s degree in music.

Yet the road to New Haven has been anything but straight for this young man of many musical hats. During his four years at Harvard, Wang has engaged music of multiple genres as not only a writer, but also as a musical director, producer, and even actor (he was a player in the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club’s production of “Pippin”).

His musical tastes run the gamut from Haydn and Revel to Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler and Swedish pop producer Max Martin, the man behind such notorious bubble-gum hits as “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and “Since U Been Gone.” After a performance of original pop and rock songs at Arts First on May 7, he will follow up with a May 16 performance of his senior thesis—a concerto for piano and a 40-piece orchestra, which Wang has assembled himself.

“Derrick is a flexible musician,” says Mason Professor of Music Carol J. Oja, who teaches Wang’s seminar on Leonard Bernstein. “He has a serious, classical side to his composition, but he also has the more free-spirited, musical theatre side.”

Wang will have an opportunity to showcase his many talents at “ Leonard Bernstein: Boston to Broadway,” a conference and festival to be held at Harvard, October 12-14. Wang has written original arrangements of Bernstein’s work for the occasion. It’s fitting role for the versatile young composer, given Bernstein’s dual careers as director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and author of the scores for plays such as “West Side Story.”

Whether or not Wang decides to follow that Harvard-trained composer and conductor into show business, Commencement will not be the last time Wang takes the stage.

—Mark F. Giangreco, Jr.