Percussion Ensemble: “World Percussion Bash” The UW Percussion Ensemble and the UW Steel Drum Ensemble (directed by Shannon Dudley) present music from a variety of musical traditions.
CONDUCTOR BIO
Shannon Dudley, Steel Drum Ensemble
Shannon Dudley, associate professor of Ethnomusicology, holds a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He teaches courses that include music of Latin America and the Caribbean, American popular music, Music and Community, Comparative Musicianship and Analysis, and graduate seminars in Ethnomusicology. He also directs the UW steeelband.
Dudley has conducted research in Trinidad and Tobago, focusing on the history and music of steelbands. More recent research projects include the music of El Gran Combo, and salsa music in Puerto Rico generally, as well as Latino contributions to American popular music. His theoretical interests include nationalism, transculturation, and participatory music practices.
His publications include Carnival Music in Trinidad (Oxford University Press, 2004), as well as Music From Behind the Bridge (Oxford University Press, 2008), a history of Trinidad steelband music, and numerous other articles on Caribbean music, including and "Judging by the Beat: Calypso vs. Soca," Ethnomusicology (1996), and “El Gran Combo, Cortijo, and the Musical Geography of Cangrejos/Santurce, Puerto Rico,” Journal of Caribbean Studies (2008).
Dudley is one of the curators (along with his wife, Marisol Berríos-Miranda, and Michelle Habell-Pallan) for American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music, a bilingual museum exhibit that opened at the Experience Music Project in Seattle in 2008. American Sabor was exhibited in museums in several U.S. cities, culminating in a 3-month run at the International Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in summer 2011. He is also guest curator for a smaller version of the exhibit prepared by the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibit Service (SITES), and for their website (http://www.americansabor.org), and is currently working on a book manuscript.
In Seattle Dudley performs on steel pan with several local bands, and participates in the Seattle Fandango Project (SFP), a community music group that practices son jarocho. He has helped to bring visiting artists from Mexico to the University of Washington (including Son de Madera and Laura Rebolloso) and to promote active collaboration between community arts activists and university individuals and programs.
Thomas Collier, Percussion Ensemble
Director of percussion studies at the University of Washington School of Music since 1980, associate professor Tom Collier has performed and recorded with many important classical, jazz, and popular artists, in addition to recording and performing with his own jazz group. He is a veteran of more than 50 years in music — his first public appearance was at age five, on xylophone, and his first professional performances were made as a nine-year-old marimba virtuoso.
Collier has appeared in concert with many important jazz and popular artists, including Eddie Daniels, Roger Kellaway, Frank Zappa, Emil Richards, Laurendo Almeida, Buddy DeFranco, Diane Schurr, Peggy Lee, Herb Ellis, Ernestine Anderson, Natalie Cole, Mannheim Steamroller, The Beach Boys, Della Reese, and many more. Although his primary focus in recent years has been jazz, Collier has continued to perform occasionally as a featured mallet soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Bellevue Philharmonic, Northwest Chamber Orchestra, and the Denver Symphony.
He has made commercial and educational recordings with his own jazz group for various jazz labels, including Inner City (New York), Music Minus One (New York), TC Records (Seattle), Nebula (Baton Rouge), and Studio 4 (Los Angeles). Collier has also made recordings with many internationally known jazz and popular artists, including Ernie Watts, Don Grusin, Bud Shank, Alex Acuna, Bobby Shew, Laurendo Almeida, Barbra Streisand, Ry Cooder, Nilsson, Howard Roberts, and others. In addition, he has appeared on many Hollywood film soundtracks under the direction of composers such as John Williams, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Lalo Schifrin, Jerry Goldsmith, and Oliver Nelson.
Collier has also established a reputation as a jazz/percussion composer, with many of his compositions for jazz percussion ensemble published by Studio 4 Productions and distributed by Alfred Music. He has won 15 consecutive ASCAP Popular Panel Awards for his jazz and percussion compositions.
Collier has recorded several educational albums for Music Minus One and Studio 4 Productions, as well as presenting more than 300 jazz concerts in public schools around Washington for the Arts in Education Program, Washington State Arts Commission. The National Association of Jazz Educators presented him with an “Outstanding Service to Jazz Education” award in 1980.
A UW alumnus, Collier graduated from the School of Music in 1971 with a BA/BM in percussion performance.