"A Night of Percussion” featuring guest artist, Brady Spitz, with the UVA Percussion Ensemble
The Department of Music presents “A Night of Percussion” featuring Brady Spitz with the UVA Percussion Ensemble, directed by I-Jen Fang on Tuesday, April 16 at 8 pm in Old Cabell Hall.
The Percussion Ensemble is excited to work with guest artist and composer, Brady Spitz, in a concert featuring the theme, “When East Meets West……,” to bridge the music between Asian and Western culture. The concert will open with a Balinese Monkey Chant Kecak, followed by a Javanese Gamelan composition, Udan Mas (Gold Rain), and will finish the first half with a world premiere composed by Dr. Spitz for solo drum set and gamelan ensemble.
Other pieces in the concert are Squabbling Ducks, composed by An Zhishun for Chinese Cymbal ensemble; a Gamelan inspired keyboard quartet, Implosion by Mantle Hood; Saigo no Bansan by “mouse on the keys,” arranged for percussion quartet by our very own Cason Duszak; and Ten Year Portrait by Ed Smith, composed for and premiere by the UVA Percussion Ensemble in 2015.
Dr. Brady Spitz is a percussionist, timpanist, and educator based in Boone, North Carolina where he is Coordinator of Percussion at Appalachian State University. He has extensive performance experience with classical, contemporary, and world percussion in a diverse group of musical environments. He has performed with the Houston Symphony, Hawaii Symphony, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestras among many others. Dr. Spitz maintains an active freelance percussion schedule and has appeared on stage alongside artists such as Idina Menzel, Weird Al Yankovic, and The Who. As a chamber musician, he has worked with a diverse group of artists, including Claire Chase and Mario Davidovsky. His duo Sonic Boom is working to create a repertoire for organ and percussion where very little has existed before, yielding upcoming international engagements.
He has given performances and clinics across the United States, as well as performing at the Percussive Arts Society’s International Conventions in 2005, 2008, and as a featured soloist with Hamiruge’s 2009 appearance. He was the director for the Houston Baptist University Gamelan Ensemble’s appearance at PASIC in 2019 and is formerly artist-in-residence at the Indonesian Consulate in Houston. He maintains an active research interest in Lou Harrison’s American Gamelan repertoire and the American Gamelan movement.
Previously, he was the front ensemble director and co-designer for the nationally-recognized Northshore High School Indoor Percussion Program, a group that won four consecutive Texas State Championships, multiple WGI Regional Championships, and was a World Class Finalist at the 2014 WGI World Championships. In his decade of private studio teaching, his students placed highly in all of the state-wide solo competitions, received consistent Superior Division UIL ratings in both solo and ensemble playing, and auditioned into some of the top colleges and conservatories in the nation.
Dr. Spitz holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Rice University, where he was awarded the Benjamin Armistead Shepherd Teaching Fellowship. He also holds a Bachelor of Music Performance in Percussion, magna cum laude, from the University of North Texas College of Music and a Master of Music in Percussion Performance from Louisiana State University. His teachers include Matthew Strauss, Richard Brown, Mark Ford, Christopher Deane, Brett William Dietz, Ed Soph, Paul Rennick, Jim Atwood, Jose Aponte, Poovalur Sriji, and Ed Smith.
Dr. Spitz is an endorser of Innovative Percussion and Black Swamp Percussion.
The UVA Percussion Ensemble is directed by I-Jen Fang, the Principal Timpanist and Percussionist with the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia. Re-established in spring 2005, the Percussion Ensemble is a chamber group that performs literature from classical transcriptions to contemporary music. The ensemble draws upon a large family of pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments. The number of players and the amount of equipment varies greatly from piece to piece. The current members of the UVA Percussion Ensemble are Helen Dunn, Cason Duszak, Jack Engel, Dylan (Piper) Jiron, Edward Lue, Luci Nguyen, Nicole Shou, Gabe Silverstein, Kunsh Singh, Rasmi Tangirala, and Thomas Worden.
This event is supported by the Eleanor Shea Music Trust.
Tickets are $10 for general admission, $9 for UVA Faculty & Staff, $5 for students and free for UVA Students who reserve in advance. Tickets are available at the UVA Arts Box Office in the Culbreth building, online at https://artsboxoffice.virginia.edu/ or by calling (434) 924-3376. UVA students need to reserve their tickets 24 hours in advance at the UVA Arts Box Office student ticket portal. For those who can not come to Old Cabell Hall, there will be a livestream of the concert.
Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA's historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda (map). Parking is available in the Central Grounds parking garage on Emmet Street, in the C1 parking lot off McCormick Road, and in the parking lots at the UVA Corner. Handicap parking is available in the small parking lot adjacent to Bryan Hall.
Please contact the Music Department at 434.924.3052 or music@virginia.edu for more information.
All events are subject to change.