Percussion Festival

Evan Chapman is a percussionist, videographer, photographer, composer, and teacher based out of Philadelphia, PA. Evan received a Bachelor of Music in Classical Percussion Performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 2013, and has since gone on to build a freelance career in both the contemporary-classical and indie rock worlds. Evan is an active performer, most notably as co-founder and drummer in the instrumental percussion rock/electronic trio Square Peg Round Hole. The group’s sophomore album, Juniper, was released in March 2016 (Spartan Records) as a double-LP and was met with critical acclaim. Square Peg has performed concerts and festivals with major-label artists including Mae, Built to Spill, Lily & Madeleine, The Album Leaf, RJD2, Dawn of Midi, Kneebody, and more, and has played at major venues across the country including the Electric Factory (Philadelphia), World Café Live (Philadelphia), Old National Centre (Indianapolis), Le Poisson Rouge (NYC), and the Treefort Music Festival (Boise). Square Peg Round Hole has been featured by Paste Magazine, Mental Floss, Boing Boing, and NPR, among others.

Payton MacDonald (b. 1974, Idaho Falls, Idaho) is a composer, improviser, percussionist, singer, and educator. He has created a unique body of work that draws upon his extensive experience with East Indian tabla drumming and Dhrupad singing, Jazz, European classical music, and the American experimental tradition. He works across multiple musical genres, often at the same time. Several recordings of MacDonald’s music exist, including the critically acclaimed Payton MacDonald: Works for Tabla on the ATMA label.

The New York Times described him as an “energetic soloist.” The Los Angeles Times described him as an “. . . inventive, stylistically omnivorous composer and gifted performer . . .” His music has also been described as “hypnotically beautiful” (The New York Times and “. . . engaging and utterly beautiful.” (Sequenza 21) MacDonald has been a featured performer of his own music on festivals in Montreal (Voyages) and Minneapolis (Electric Eyes).

Baltimore-based percussionist and performer Adam Rosenblatt has a penchant for finding interesting and uncommon ways to present and perform contemporary music. He has a keen interest for growing an interdisciplinary performance practice, believing that a mix of media and art forms can speak more directly and powerfully to our current modern context.

Adam frequently performs with the Ictus Ensemble in Brussels, Belgium, and is a founding member of QuaQuaQua, a new percussion trio which focuses on the ambiguous space between musical and theatrical performance. Adam has recently been seen in such varied venues as Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of IRCAM’s Manifeste festival; Berghain in Berlin with experimental electronic duo Matmos; the Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway to premiere a new evening-length theatrical work by François Sarhan; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium to perform a work for drumset, electronics, and motion sensors for school children.

Highlights of Adam’s 2016-17 season include concerts with QuaQuaQua in Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York; performances in Brussels, Belgium and Athens, Greece with the Ictus Ensemble for their “Ghost Notes” production; a residency at the Banff Centre’s Concerts in the 21st Century program; and the premiere of “Godly Chaos” at the Baltimore Theatre Project, a unique performance experience conceived, produced, and directed by Adam, and performed by QuaQuaQua with works by Thierry de Mey, David Lang, Alexander Schubert, John Cage, and François Sarhan.

Terry Sweeney is a member of Sandbox Percussion, Le Train Bleu, Novus NY, the Lunar Ensemble, and HOWL – a new interdisciplinary performance ensemble.

As a member of Sandbox Percussion, Terry has performed over fifty concerts across the United States. With Sandbox, Terry has presented masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, Peabody Conservatory, Cornell University, and Furman University. 2016 marked the inaugural year of the NYU-Sandbox Percussion seminar.  The weeklong summer program hosted college-aged percussionists from around the world to rehearse and perform side by side with Sandbox. This past season, Sandbox conceived “Supperclub”, an innovative concert series that combines dining, contemporary music, and dancing at nightclubs in New York City that will expand to Miami and Los Angeles next year. The 2014/15 season also saw Sandbox perform at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, the first percussion group ever to be invited to do so.  The 2016/17 season will include performances on both coasts of the US, masterclasses in Kansas, Washington DC, South Carolina, and California and the premiere of Quixote, an evening length theatrical work composed by Amy Beth Kirsten and directed by Mark DeChiazza to be premiered at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances series.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Terry has collaborated with composers such as Amy Beth Kirsten, Andy Akiho, John Luther Adams, Thomas Kotcheff, Jorg Widmann, Jason Eckardt, Francois Sarhan, and David Crowell. His past season included over twenty world premieres. Terry holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory and the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Robert van Sice. Mr. Sweeney endorses Vic Firth sticks and mallets and Remo drumheads.

Percussionist Ayano Kataoka is known for her brilliant and dynamic technique, as well as the unique elegance and artistry she brings to her performances. She was the first percussionist to be chosen for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society Two, a three-season residency program for emerging artists offering high-profile performance opportunities in collaboration with The Chamber Music Society. She has collaborated with many of the world’s most respected and leading artists, including Emanuel Ax, Jaime Laredo, Ani Kavafian, David Shifrin, Jeremy Denk, to name a few. She gave a world premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s Self Comes to Mind for cello and two percussionists with cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the American Museum of Natural History. She presented a solo recital at Tokyo Opera City Recital Hall which was broadcast on NHK, the national public station of Japan. Other appearances as a percussion soloist include a performance of Steven Mackey’s Micro-Concerto for Percussion Solo and Chamber Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall, and collaborations with Portland-based dance company BodyVox at Chamber Music Northwest. Her performances can be also heard on Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos, New World, and Albany recording labels. Since 2013, she has toured in the U.S. and Mexico extensively as a percussionist for Cuatro Corridos, a chamber opera led by Grammy Award winning soprano Susan Narucki and noted Mexican author Jorge Volpi that addresses human trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border. Most recently, the opera was presented as a special event at 2015 FIL/Guadalajara International Book Fair, the largest Spanish language book fair in the world. A native of Japan, Ayano began her marimba studies at age five, and percussion at fifteen. She received her artist diploma degree from Yale University School of Music, where she studied with marimba virtuoso Robert van Sice. She is a faculty member of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Mezzo-soprano Elspeth Davis begins her 2016-17 season with a performance of Gregory Spear’s cycle Owen Songs as part of the concert series at An Die Musik in Baltimore, MD. This performance marks the debut of Two Cities, a new ensemble with soprano Melissa Wimbish. Other engagements include a Southeastern tour of and the new piece Goldbeater’s Skin by composer Christopher Cerrone,  with frequent collaborators Sandbox Percussion.

A passionate performer of new music, Elspeth has collaborated with composer and violist Jessica Meyer to create a piece for two voices and percussion ensemble entitled Twenty Minutes of Action, with text taken from the Stanford Rape Trial; she has also collaborated with composer Thomas Kotcheff on a new work for voice and chamber ensemble on the life of Leonarda Cianciulli, one of Italy’s first female serial killers. Both will see their premieres in 2018.

Elspeth is also co-host of the classical music podcast, Opera After Dark, available on iTunes. For more information, please visit www.operaafterdark.com.

Praised for his “excellent” and “precisely attuned” performances by the New York Times, percussionist Ian David Rosenbaum has developed a musical breadth far beyond his years. He made his Kennedy Center debut in 2009 and later that year garnered a special prize created for him at the Salzburg International Marimba Competition.

Mr. Rosenbaum joined the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program in 2012 as only the second percussionist they have selected in their history. He has appeared at the Bay Chamber, Bridgehampton, Chamber Music Northwest, Music@Menlo, Norfolk, and Yellow Barn festivals.

Highlights of the 2016-2017 season include the world premiere of Quixote, an evening- length theatrical work with music by Amy Beth Kirsten and direction by Mark DeChiazza, a visit to the Adam Chamber Music Festival in New Zealand, and world premieres by Andy Akiho, Christopher Cerrone, Thomas Kotcheff, and Polina Nazaykinskaya, among others.

In the fall of 2016, Mr. Rosenbaum will release his first solo album, Memory Palace, on VIA Records. It features five commissions from the last several years and includes collaborations with Brooklyn Rider and Gina Izzo.

Mr. Rosenbaum is a member of Sandbox Percussion, HOWL, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Foundry, and Novus NY. He has recorded for the Bridge, Innova, Naxos, and Starkland labels and is on the faculty of the Dwight School in Manhattan. Mr. Rosenbaum endorses Vic Firth sticks and mallets.

Born in New Haven, CT, and raised in Columbia, SC, Kenneth Salters began his musical career pursuing his studies as a percussion major at the University of South Carolina. Since moving to New York in 2006, he has worked with luminaries in jazz and R&B including Don Byron, Chris Potter, and Aretha Franklin

Ben Eunson is a guitarist who seeks to redefine the sound of the guitar for both the present moment and the future, and is establishing his presence as a prominent guitar voice in the New York City music scene. Some of the artists Eunson has played with include Terri Lyne Carrington, Queen Latifah, Valerie Simpson, Dave Liebman, David Weiss, Myron Walden, Raymond Angry, Questlove, Marcus Strickland, Lalah Hathaway, Lizz Wright and Kendra Foster. He has performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Detroit Jazz Festival, The Hollywood Bowl, and has also performed in London, Iceland,

Switzerland, Morocco, Turkey and Australia.
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Ben Eunson started playing guitar from age 10. Eunson relocated to the United States in 2011, receiving a scholarship to attend New England Conservatory in Boston. During this time, he was given the opportunity to study with key figures in Jazz such as Jason Moran, Jerry Bergonzi, Donny McCaslin and Dave Holland, while also using this time to further develop his own unique approach to improvisation.

He currently resides in New York City.

Baltimore-based percussionist and performer Adam Rosenblatt has a penchant for finding interesting and uncommon ways to present and perform contemporary music. He has a keen interest for growing an interdisciplinary performance practice, believing that a mix of media and art forms can speak more directly and powerfully to our current modern context.

Adam frequently performs with the Ictus Ensemble in Brussels, Belgium, and is a founding member of QuaQuaQua, a new percussion trio which focuses on the ambiguous space between musical and theatrical performance. Adam has recently been seen in such varied venues as Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of IRCAM’s Manifeste festival; Berghain in Berlin with experimental electronic duo Matmos; the Borealis Festival in Bergen, Norway to premiere a new evening-length theatrical work by François Sarhan; and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium to perform a work for drumset, electronics, and motion sensors for school children.

Lauded by The Washington Post as “revitalizing the world of contemporary music” with “jaw-dropping virtuosity,” Sandbox Percussion has established themselves as a leading proponent in this generation of contemporary percussion chamber music. Brought together by their love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together, Sandbox Percussion captivates audiences with performances that are both visually and aurally stunning. Through compelling collaborations with composers and performers, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum and Terry Sweeney seek to engage a wider audience for classical music.

Sandbox made their New York debut in 2012 on the Concerts on the Slope series in Brooklyn. Following that performance, they accepted an invitation to become artists-in-residence of the series and have returned in each subsequent season. Later that year, Sandbox worked closely with composer James Wood on his masterpiece Village Burial with Fire at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. While at Norfolk, Sandbox played alongside the great Hungarian percussion quartet Amadinda – Aurél Holló, a member of Amadinda, later said about Sandbox: “With an array of skills, talent and freshness, these young artists seem to be pushing their limits up in the skies, as I realized listening to them at the Yale New Music Workshop. Sandbox Percussion is the promising group of the near future, battering right on your door.”

Josh Quillen has forged a unique identity in the contemporary music world as all-around percussionist, expert steel drum performer (lauded as “softly sophisticated” by the New York Times), and composer. His collaborations with other composers frequently incorporate the steel drums as a core element.

A member of the acclaimed ensemble So Percussion since 2006, Josh has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Lincoln Center Festival, Stanford Lively Arts, and dozens of other venues in the United States. In that time, So Percussion has toured Russia, Spain, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Scotland. He has had the opportunity to work closely with Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Paul Lansky, David Lang, Matmos, Dan Deacon, and many others.

Lauded as the “Jimi Hendrix of Hammered Dulcimer” by NPR, and & A Force of nature” Max ZT is an innovator of the instrument. Taking his roots from Irish and American folk music, Max has transplanted his compositional techniques to both Senegal, where he studied the Mandinko technique with the Cissoko griot family, and to India, where he received the prestigious AIIS grant to study under the great santoor master Pandit Shivkumar Sharma. His fresh perspective and bold experimentalism have been the backbone to beautiful, complex, and genuine compositions, while his unorthodox playing style has been a pioneering force in revolutionizing dulcimer techniques.

Max has enlivened the conceptual framework of traditional folk music by fusing multi-cultural roots and traditions to create a truly compelling sound.

Max ZT and his band House of Waters have been called “One of the most original bands on the planet,” by NY Music Daily, and have shared the stage with some of the most influential international musical leaders of the century including Pt. Ravi Shankar, Tinariwen, Jon Bon Jovi, Jimmy Cliff, Bela Fleck, Karsh Kale, Snarky Puppy, and more. With their most recent album House of Waters hitting #2 on the iTunes World Music charts, critics are raving. All About Jazz calls the album, “truly mesmerizing. House Of Waters resonates throughout with a true eclecticism drawing its influences from many sources. A rare and beautiful gem.” While Timeout NY states House of Waters is “A sight to behold.”

MaxZT is based out of Brooklyn, New York. He has put out nine albums, and in 2005, won the National Hammered Dulcimer Championship. He’s recorded with a vast array of artists across musical genres, ranging from Victor Wooten, to The Goo Goo Dolls, to American Idol Phil Phillips.

Mentored by Gregory Hines, Andrew Nemr is considered one of the most diverse tap dance artists today. An international performer, choreographer, educator and speaker, Andrew’s work explores tap dance as a vehicle for storytelling and community building. He has played with Grammy Award winning musicians across multiple genres, founded and directed the tap dance company Cats Paying Dues, and co-founded the Tap Legacy™ Foundation, Inc. (along with Hines).

“A masterly tapper” (New York Times), Nemr’s work has been recognized with a TED Fellowship, acceptance into the SupporTED Collaboratorium, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces: Dance Initiative and the CUNY Dance Initiative, a FloBert Award for Tap Dance Excellence, and residencies with Quarterly Arts Soiree at Webster Hall, BRICLab, More Art’s Engaging Artists program, Surel’s Place, and the TED Residency. Nemr is recorded on the Grammy nominated recording Itsbynne Reel by Dave Eggar, the DVD Documentary and companion album Tuesdays at Mona’s by Mona’s Hot Four, and narrates the DanceTime Publications DVD, Tap Dance History: From Vaudeville to Film. An avid public speaker, Nemr now uses the story of his journey and the craft of tap dance to speak on ideas of identity, community, faith, and love.