Jan McDaniel

Jan Lee McDaniel, the Oklahoma City University pianist, conductor, and vocal coach who spent more than twenty-five years shaping opera and musical theatre at the Wanda L. Bass School of Music, died on 13 August 2026 at age 69. Dignity Memorial listings give his birth date as 18 June 1957. The Oklahoman later reported that he had been battling cancer and remembered him as the campus musician who worked with stars including Kristin Chenoweth and Kelli O'Hara while building one of the rare Master of Music vocal-coaching programs in the United States.

Equally at home on the podium and at the keyboard, McDaniel served as Professor of Vocal Coaching and conductor of OCU's Opera and Musical Theater Company. He musical-directed more than thirty campus productions, from Puccini and Mozart to Rodgers and Hammerstein and Gershwin, including the world premiere of Edward Knight's Night of the Comets. His 2013 Il barbiere di Siviglia won Best Opera Production for Division III from the National Opera Association, and subsequent OCU shows kept winning NOA recognition. Off campus he was musical director for Painted Sky Opera and for Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma titles such as West Side Story, Newsies, Master Class, and Kinky Boots, and he appeared as a guest conductor with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic.

Earlier posts took him to Detmold State Theater in Germany (1982-1985) and to a decade directing accompanying and orchestral work at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, where he also led the Orchestra of the Pines. Educated at Midwestern State University (BM piano) and the University of North Texas (MM musicology; doctoral coursework), he was a Rotary International Graduate Scholar at the Nordwest Deutsche Musikakademie. Collaborative partners ranged from Leona Mitchell and Susanne Mentzer to Chenoweth and O'Hara; coaching alumni moved into opera houses and Broadway pits. He appears on Albany Records' Where the Sunsets Bleed chamber-music disc of Edward Knight.

Oklahoma's arts community marked his death in mid-September coverage that pointed readers back to decades of Fridays spent in rehearsal rooms rather than only to the final illness. For students and colleagues, McDaniel's legacy is the coaches he trained, the NOA trophies his productions collected, and the local professional companies that trusted him with Verdi, Puccini, Heggie, and Broadway scores alike.