Bob Becker Ensemble
Bob Becker, Chris Norton, Gordon Stout, Bill Cahn with guests
Yurika Kimura, Jamie Marie Jordan
Percussion Music of Bob Becker
Keyboard Showcase Concert
Thursday, 12:00 p.m.
Bob Becker Bill Cahn
Gordon Stout Chris Norton
Co-founder of NEXUS and PAS Hall of Fame member, Bob Becker has a career that spans almost every percussion discipline. He has been well known as a performer, composer, and clinician for nearly 40 years. Generally considered to be one of the world’s premier virtuoso performers on the xylophone and marimba, he also appears regularly as an independent soloist. In particular, his work toward resurrecting the repertoire and performance styles of early 20th century xylophone music has been internationally recognized. He has been involved with the composer Steve Reich and his various ensembles since 1972, winning a Grammy Award in 1998. He is associated with Malletech/KPP, Sabian, and Pearl/Adams, and has received Sabian's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was recognized as a "Master Drummer" by the International Association of Traditional Drummers, which is an organization founded by the legendary rudimentalist, John S. Pratt.
Bill Cahn has been a member of the NEXUS percussion group since 1971, and was principal percussionist in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 1968 to 1995. He is now Associate Professor of Percussion at the Eastman School of Music and a visiting artist in residence at the Showa Academy of Music in Kawasaki, Japan. Bill has performed with conductors, composers, ensembles, and artists representing diverse musical styles, including Chet Atkins, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Chuck Mangione, Mitch Miller, Seiji Ozawa, Steve Reich, Doc Severinsen, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Edgar Varese and Paul Winter. He has conducted programs with symphony orchestras, and his compositions for solo percussion, percussion ensemble, and percussion with orchestra/band are widely performed. Routledge Books published his fourth book, Creative Music Making, on free-form improvisation in 2005. In 2006, Bill received a Grammy Award as part of the Paul Winter Consort on the DVD titled, Ò2004 Solstice Concerto.
Gordon Stout is a Professor of Percussion at the School
of Music at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York where he has taught
percussion since 1980. A composer as well as a percussionist who
specializes on marimba, he has studied composition with Joseph
Schwanter, Samuel Adler, and Warren Benson, and percussion with James
Salmon and John Beck. As a composer/recitalist, Stout has premiered
many of his original compositions -- several of which have already
become standard repertoire for marimbists worldwide -- as well as works
by other contemporary composers. A frequent lecturer/recitalist for
PAS, Gordon Stout has appeared as a featured marimbist at twelve PASICs.
Gordon was on the jury of the 1st and 2nd Leigh Howard Stevens
International Marimba Competitions (1995 and 1998), the 2nd and 3rd
World Marimba Competitions in Okaya, Japan (1999) and Stuttgart, Germany
(2002), and the International Marimba Competition in Linz, Austria
(2006)
Christopher Norton is Professor of Music and Director of Percussion Studies at Belmont University in Nashville. Prior to joining the Belmont faculty in 2001, he taught at Western Kentucky University for fourteen years. His bachelor's and master's degrees are from the Eastman School of Music, and his doctorate is from Louisiana State University. Norton performs regularly as a percussionist with Nashville Symphony, Alias Chamber Ensemble, Sympatico Percussion Group, and the Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra. Formerly, he performed and recorded with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Bob Becker Ensemble, and the Jack Daniel’s Silver Cornet Band. His solo marimba CD, Christopher Norton: Creston Concertino for Marimba, features several first edition recordings of twentieth-century American works. He has given clinics and recitals in Europe and across the U.S., is a past state chapter president of PAS, and currently serves as Chairman of the PAS Keyboard Percussion Committee. Also an active orchestral conductor, Norton is Music Director of the Nashville Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sponsors
XyloMusic