Youngstown State University Percussion Ensemble
Glenn Schaft
Butler Institute of American Art
Personnel
YSU Percussion Ensemble Personnel
Nathaniel Adams -Petersburg, OH
Terence Boggs - Warren, OH
Michael Daniels - Fostoria, OH
Owen Davis - Vienna, OH
Stephen Dorbish - Canfield, OH
Joel Gillespie - East Liverpool, OH
Jo’El Harrison - Farrell, PA,
Brandon Maffitt - Warren, OH,
Evan McCreary - Poland, OH,
Anthony Tresky - Pittsburgh, PA
About the Director
GLENN SCHAFT is Professor and Director of Percussion Studies at Youngstown State University. He is the advisor/co-founder of the Youngstown Percussion Collective and an artist with Avedis Zildjian Co., Innovative Percussion Inc., Remo Inc., and a member of the Black Swamp Percussion Educators Network. Glenn earned the DMA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the MA from Eastern Illinois University, and the BM from Baldwin Wallace University. He pursued post doctoral studies in contemporary music and orchestral percussion at Cleveland State University, Afro-Cuban music in Havana, Cuba and world percussion at the Berklee School of Music World Percussion Festival. Glenn’s teachers include John Hollenbeck, John Riley, Tom Freer, Jay Burnham, Lewis Nash, Ted Piltzecker, Tom Siwe, Johnny Lee Lane, George Kiteley, Harold Damas, Linda Pimentel, and Ruben Alvarez. A member of the Percussive Arts Society, Glenn serves on the Drumset Committee and has appeared as performer, lecturer, and panelist at PAS international conventions.
Glenn’s career spans idioms such as classical, new music, world music, jazz, blues, rock, reggae, funk, Brazilian, West African, and Afro-Cuban. Glenn has recorded and served as executive producer with the Youngstown Percussion Collective, Dave Morgan, Ron Coulter, John Hollenbeck, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Scott Wyatt, Amanda Powell, Air Force Band of Mid-America, Youngstown State University Wind Ensemble, and myriad jingles.
His credits include conductors Giora Bernstein, Jeffery Siegel, Anton Coppola, Edwin London, Gunther Schuller, Paul Martin Zonn, Peter Schickele, aka P.D.Q. Bach ensembles such as Colorado Music Festival, Skaneateles (NY) Chamber Music Festival, "Artist In Residence" at Baldwin-Wallace University with BATTU contemporary/world percussion group, Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Cleveland Ballet, Ohio Chamber Orchestra, Cleveland Opera, Robert Page Singers, Akron Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Springfield (IL) Symphony, Youngstown Symphony, Duluth-Superior Symphony, Champaign-Urbana Symphony, Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra, Dance Theater of Harlem, Cleveland Dance Collective, and artists such as Paul Sperry, Julie Newell, Robert Weirich, Robert Van Sice, Peter Erskine, and Ben Toth.
Glenn drumset and world music credits include Ruben Alvarez, American Jazz Orchestra, Chuck Berry, Nick Brignola, Freddie Bryant, Ndugu Chancellor, Sarah Jane Cion, Stewart Copeland, Anthony Cox, 1940's Radio Hour Show-US Tour, Todd Coolman, Harold Danko, Paquito D’Rivera, Larry Elgart, Raul Esparza, John Fedchock, Five By Design, Reynaldo Gonzales, Taku Hirano, Laurence Hobgood, Engelbert Humperdink, Randy Johnston, Sean Jones, Mike Kocour, Alison Krauss, Victor Krauss, Ralph Lalama, Tony Leonardi, Robert Lockwood Jr., Bryan Lynch, Jim McNeely, Hank Marr, Phil Palombi, Ken Peplowski, Chita Rivera, Trichy Sankaran, Michael Spiro, Marvin Stamm, Chip Stephens, The Texas Tenors, Alan Vizzutti, Dan Wall, James Weidman, Michael Weiss, Mike Wofford, Women of the Phantom, Andrea Zonn, and Youngstown State University Faculty Jazz Group.
About the YSU Percussion Ensemble
Notable performances include the 2018 Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis, Percussive Arts Society Ohio Chapter Days of Percussion at Capital University, Ohio Northern University, Youngstown State University, and Ohio Music Education Association Conferences in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. A central part of our mission involves collaborations with composers in the commissioning, premiering, and critically acclaimed recording of their works. Our 2005 release "Dark Wood" includes six premiere recordings and commissions. Our commission project with New York City-based percussionist/composer John Hollenbeck on his "Ziggurat" for five percussionists and four saxophonists, was premiered at the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, and is available on his 2008 release "Rainbow Jimmies." The Youngstown Percussion Collective's 2012 release "Forms Of Things Unknown" is a concert-length suite by YSU professor of jazz studies, bass, and composition, Dr. Dave Morgan. Our 2012 recording of Ron Coulter's "Cajon Trio" will appear on an upcoming 2019 Coulter CD release.
PERCUSSION I-V (1935)
Johanna Magdalena Beyer (1888-1944)
PERCUSSION I-V. Johanna Magdalena Beyer (1888-1944) was a German-born composer and pianist considered one of the Ultra-Modernists of early 20th Century American music. Beyer was an integral composer and networker in the development of percussion music in Western canon, alongside Henry Cowell, John Cage, Lou Harrison, William Russell, and others.
For decades the fourth movement of PERCUSSION has been considered a complete, free-standing composition titled IV, when in fact it is a single movement from this larger five-movement work. IV was Beyer's only published work during her lifetime appearing in Henry Cowell's 1936 New Music Orchestra Series, Collection No. 18. PERCUSSION is the first known percussion composition to use unspecified instrumentation, thus allowing endless reinvention of the work. – Ron Coulter and Glenn Schaft
Another Norther (1976)
Charles Amirkhanian (b. 1945)
Charles Amirkhanian was born in Fresno in 1945 and resides in El Cerrito, CA. He is a composer, percussionist, and poet known for his text-sound compositions that employ speech sounds in rhythmic patterns that resemble percussion music, and for his electroacoustic essays incorporating acoustic ambient sounds alongside more traditional musical tones that create disjunct, trance-like dreamscapes.
Looking into a faded life burning out. (2007-2017)
Ron Coulter (b. 1978)
“Looking into a faded life burning out” took eleven years to complete; it was started in 2007 (Carbondale, IL) and completed in 2017 (Casper, WY), sometimes going untouched for a year or more. It is a quartet for crotales, vibraphone, marimba, and bass marimba, with options for doubling certain parts up to a total of nine performers. The work juxtaposes the two disparate ideas of rigid constraint (meter, rhythm, pitch, repetition, etc.) and pliable freedom (obscuring meter/rhythm/pitch, stream-of-consciousness-like phrasing, etc.). Techniques of note include: use of the vibraphone’s variable motor speed (amplitude modulation), bowing of crotales, and muted notes in the bass marimba. – Ron Coulter
Ron Coulter is Instructor of Percussion, Improvisation, and World Musics at Casper College in Casper Wyoming and has presented at more than 100 universities internationally.
As a performer, he has toured internationally appearing in 49 U.S. states, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Japan. He has performed with such artists as the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Four Aces, Al Martino, New Arts Jazztet, Tatsuya Nakatani, Michael Zerang, Chris Corsano, James Falzone, Bolokada Condé, Linux Laptop Orchestra, Robert Van Sice, Lucy Shelton, Sandy Duncan, Youngstown Percussion Collective, and Tone Road Ramblers, among others.
Ron has presented at numerous conferences including: ISIM, PASIC, NIME, LiWoLi, BMC-3, JEN, Futurisms, Blurred Edges, Soundlines, RadiaLx, Athena Festival, a.pe.ri.od.ic, New Music Circle, Montreal Jazz Festival, and more. Other performance credits include the Youngstown Symphony, Paducah Symphony, Altgeld Chamber Players, Warren Philharmonic, Music from China, and Chicago Chamber Orchestra.
Interests in noise, intermedia, interdisciplinary collaboration, and non-idiomatic improvisation have led to organizing Fluxconcerts and collaborative projects with artists specializing in performance art, video, and spoken word. Ron is co-founder of the Percussion Art Ensemble, duende entendre, Marble Hammer, and founder of the Southern Illinois Improvisation Series and Wyoming Experimental Sound Series. As a composer, Ron has created more than 340 works for various media.
Originally from Hermitage, Pennsylvania, Ron Coulter (b. 1978) was raised on a dairy farm and earned M.M. and B.M. degrees in Percussion Performance from Youngstown State University. His principle teachers include Glenn Schaft, Tony Leonardi, Feza Zweifel, Fred Morris, Erica Azim, Caution Shonhai, Bolokada Condé, and Nina DeCiancio.
Thanks! Dr. Glenn Schaft and the YSU Percussion Studio would like to thank Avedis Zildjian cymbal company, Remo Inc. drumheads and world percussion, Innovative Percussion Inc., sticks and mallets, and Black Swamp Percussion for their product and artist support.
