MI SUCCESS STORY: ANDREA VADRUCCI

In 2007, Andrea’s personal drum performances attracted considerable success on his YouTube video channel, which has over 85 million views, holding the record for number of subscriptions among Italian independent music channels.

His drum arrangement of the Super Mario Bros theme exceeded 4 million views in less than a year allowing Andrea to appear in the ranking of the top worldwide musicians and to be quoted by international press/media.

In November 2007, Andrea won the “Drummer of Tomorrow” Italian competition “technical section”, and after all of his successes at home in Italy, the natural born drummer wanted to combine his love for his instrument and the city of L.A., which led him to Musicians Institute.

Andrea said,

“I discovered MI and I understood that it was the right place to grow up musically, to challenge myself and compare myself with other musicians, to improve my technique, to broaden my musical horizons and to deepen as many musical genres as possible.”

In 2009, he graduated from MI with a Certificate in Drum performance and subsequently performed in prestigious international events, sharing the stage with drumming icons such as Billy Cobham and Steve Gadd. In 2011, Andrea produced and released his first solo album Classical Drumming with a 36-piece orchestra, a proud achievement he said “doesn’t happen often in a drummer’s life!”

Andrea endorses the brands Zildjian, Tama and Vic Firth, and he was recently included in the top 500 most famous drummers of all time on the website Drummerworld.com. Besides his solo career, Andrea is very active as session man in the studio and live on stage: In 2016 he completed a 2-year tour with the world renowned Cirque du Soleil as a featured drummer in their show KOOZA.

Andrea said of his experiences of studying at MI,

“In addition to the tangible improvement from a technical/theoretical point of view and the considerable musical enrichment, I learned how to have proper dialogue with other musicians and I discovered various aspects of music business that I didn’t know before. All of this has had positive effects on my playing, on how best to deal with any kind of gig and on being ready for any new adventure and musical challenge.”