Ethan McGraw is a local freelance percussionist, steel pannist, arranger, concert production worker, and educator. A lover of any type of music he can drum alongside, he is excited to share the love of music with all listeners.
Growing up in Las Vegas, NV Ethan’s love of music began at a young age, from listening to his mother play Broadway medleys and classical pieces on the piano, to banging his hands on anything he could find in his grandmother’s kitchen. After a couple elementary school dabbling’s, he began learning percussion in middle school, and over a decade later he has just as much joy performing music as he did back then. Ethan attended the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver, and despite his first two years being during a global pandemic, was able to learn from some of the Rockies’ best musicians and educators. Since graduation he has remained in the Denver area working in many different facets of the music industry, primarily dealing in concert production at local venues like the Newman Center and Arvada Center.
A true lover of musical theater, Ethan is an active performer in the local theater scene, with recent performances including playing drums/percussion in the Vintage Theater’s Production of “Fun Home”, where critics called the bands work “…near perfect…” under the direction of music director Alec Michael Powell (Denver Post, February 2024), and with Little Theater of the Rockies for their production of “A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder” under the musical direction of Victor Walters. This passion for musical theater has also led him to education, working with Reel Kids, a children’s theater troupe in Boulder, CO for over two years as a drummer, stage manager, and summer camp instructor. Recently he has drummed for shows including “The Prom!” and “Legally Blonde”, and stage-managed shows like “Into the Woods Jr.” and “Alice in Wonderland Jr.”
Outside of musical theater, Ethan gigs locally in the Denver area in a variety of musical genres including jazz and classical music. He is a founding member and the percussionist of the Denver based jazz collective The Improphets (who are currently working on their debut record). He also has a love of the marching arts, currently working at Green Mountain High School in Lakewood, CO as their percussion instructor.
Ethan is also a student of many world musics, including the steel pan from Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the Japanese art of Taiko Drumming, having performed with the Akita International University’s (国際教養大学) Kantō (竿燈 ) Team during his time abroad in the fall of 2023.
Ethan graduated in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts (Music) Degree with a secondary major in Languages, Literatures & Cultures (Concentration in Japanese). He is a student of Tom Miller (Steel Pannist, Director of the Lamont Steel Drum Ensemble), John Kinzie (Principal Percussionist of the Colorado Symphony), and Michael Toole (PhD in Japanese, University of Wisconsin Madison).