Gordon Stout (born 1952) is an American percussionist, composer, and educator specializing in the marimba. [1]
He studied composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler, and Warren Benson, and percussion with James Salmon and John Beck. Many of his compositions for marimba (i.e., Two Mexican Dances for Marimba from 1977, and the Astral Dance) have become standard repertoire for marimba players worldwide. [2]
As a marimba player, he has presented solo performances throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and Mexico. In the summer of 1998 he was a featured marimba performer at the World Marimba Festival in Osaka, Japan. His students include David Hall, Alex Jacobowitz and Dane Richeson. He is a member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame.
Stout served as professor of percussion at the School of Music of Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. [3] He retired in 2019.
The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the marimba has a lower range. Typically, the bars of a marimba are arranged chromatically, like the keys of a piano. The marimba is a type of idiophone.
The Music of Nicaragua contains a mixture of European, Indigenous, and African influences. Occasionally, it also rarely features Asian and Arab musical influences as well as from other countries of Hispanic and Latino origin. Musical instruments include the marimba and others that are common across Central America. Pop music includes performers from all around the world including Nicaraguans, Cubans, Brazilians, Mexicans, Panamanians, as well as those from Europe and the United States.
The music of Guatemala is diverse. Music is played all over the country. Towns also have wind and percussion bands that play during the lent and Easter-week processions as well as on other occasions. The marimba is an important instrument in Guatemalan traditional songs. The oldest documented use of marimba in the Americas dates to 1680 during celebrations at Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala.
Keiko Abe is a Japanese composer and marimba player. She has been a primary figure in the development of the marimba, in terms of expanding both technique and repertoire, and through her collaboration with the Yamaha Corporation, developed the modern five-octave concert marimba.
Leigh Howard Stevens is a marimba artist best known for developing, codifying, and promoting the Stevens technique or Musser-Stevens grip, a method of independent four-mallet marimba performance based on the Musser grip.
Toshi Ichiyanagi was a Japanese avant-garde composer and pianist. One of the leading composers in Japan during the postwar era, Ichiyanagi worked in a range of genres, composing Western-style operas and orchestral and chamber works, as well as compositions using traditional Japanese instruments. Ichiyanagi is known for incorporating avant-garde techniques into his works, such as chance music, extended technique, and nontraditional scoring. Ichiyanagi was married to artist Yoko Ono from 1956 to 1962.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
Joseph Clyde Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize.
Warren Benson was an American composer. His compositions consist mostly of music for wind instruments and percussion. His most notable piece is titled The Leaves Are Falling (1964).
Nancy Zeltsman is an international marimba soloist who has taught at the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music since 1993.
International Marimba Soloist, Bogdan Băcanu became a professor for marimba at the famous Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz (Austria) at just 23 years old of age.
Víctor Varela is a Venezuelan-Swedish composer based in Gothenburg. His compositions include works for orchestra, vocal and instrumental chamber music, with electronics and computer devices.
Drumming is a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich, dating from 1970–1971. Reich began composition of the work after a short visit to Ghana and observing music and musical ensembles there, especially under the Anlo Ewe master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. His visit was cut short after contracting malaria. Classical music critic K. Robert Schwarz describes the work as "minimalism's first masterpiece".
Akira Miyoshi was a Japanese composer.
Yoshirō Vladimir Irino was a Japanese composer.
John Serry Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer, as well as a composer of contemporary classical music works that feature percussion, on which he also doubles. He is a son of the accordionist and composer John Serry. His debut solo album was 'Exhibition', for which he received a Grammy Nomination for his composition, 'Sabotage'.
Allan Gordon Bell, is a Canadian contemporary classical composer.
Michael Waldrop is an American drummer, percussionist, composer and music educator. He is notable as a virtuoso percussionist in both jazz and classical idioms, with equal focus on drumset and keyboard percussion (marimba/vibraphone). Since 2014, he has been a recording artist for Origin Records.
Raymond Luedeke is an American / Canadian composer of contemporary classical music. Praised for his idiosyncratic instrumental writing and for his orchestration, Luedeke has more recently concentrated on works for music theatre. Although born in New York City, he spent 29 years as Associate Principal Clarinet with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a position he left in 2010. A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, Ray Luedeke is artistic director of Voice Afire Opera-Cabaret in New York City.
Time Frames is a 2021 album by Michael Waldrop, his third release with Origin Records. The recording is a crossover from classical to new music, jazz, minimalism and world music. The album was chosen for the 2021 AllMusic Guide Top 50 List of Classical Recordings.