In his 20+ year career working in the theatrical, concert, and recording worlds, Brad Haak has music directed and conducted four Broadway productions; orchestrated for numerous U.S. symphony orchestras; shared the concert stage with such stars as Audra McDonald and Paul McCartney; coached countless Broadway performers and recording artists such as Beyoncé and supervised the development of over 40 new musicals in the U.S. and internationally.
He now calls Chicago home.
Brad has conducted national tours of Disney’s The Lion King as well as Miss Saigon.
Regionally, he has music directed over 40 equity productions, including critically acclaimed productions of Follies and Sunday in the Park With George with director Gary Griffin at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and earning him a Jeff Award for Music Direction.
He has conducted nine productions at St. Louis’s famed MUNY Theatre - the nation’s oldest and largest outdoor theatre as well as Follies at the St. Louis Repertory Theatre. He has twice won the St. Louis Theatre Circle Award for music direction. With director Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Brad conducted a concert presentation of Stephen Schwartz’s Children of Eden at the Kennedy Center with the Kennedy Center Orchestra as well as Ragtime at Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) in 2019.
His music supervision credits include collaborations with director/book writer John Caird (Les Miserables) and composer/lyricist Paul Gordon (Jane Eyre) on multiple productions, for which Brad also serves as orchestrator and vocal arranger.
Their Daddy Long Legs was the first New York production ever to be live-streamed, attracting an international audience of over 75,000 people in a single evening. The show has run off-B’way, in London, Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, and since being licensed by M.T.I, throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Off-Broadway production recorded a cast album available on all streaming platforms.
In 2018, their new pop rock musical A Knights Tale (based loosely on Shakespeare’s and Fletcher’s Two Noble Kinsmen) premiered in Tokyo and was directed by Caird. In 2019, A Knights Tale in Symphonic Concert was presented with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and the original cast. The hit show was remounted in 2020 for yet another sold out run. Their Estella Scrooge: A Christmas Carol With a Twist
In March of 2022, Caird and Haak opened a first-ever stage adaptation of the beloved animated film Spirited Away to rave reviews and sold out houses. The production is currently touring Japan and a video capture will be featured on Hulu this summer.
Other international credits include Richard Maltby and David Shire’s Sousatzka (Toronto), the pre-Broadway tryout of An American in Paris (Paris), Honk! (Singapore and the Philippines) and Jane Eyre (Tokyo.)
Brad's concert work has included performances with such singers as Audra McDonald, Ashley Brown, Kristin Chenoweth, and Sir Paul McCartney. His arrangements and orchestrations have been performed by the Boston and New York Pops, L.A. Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center.