Biography

Composer - Percussionist - Musicologist

Brian Shank is a composer, percussionist, and musicologist. His music has been performed by the Rome Opera Choir, the New Jersey Symphony, and the Juilliard Pre-College Percussion Ensemble. He has been commissioned by Italy’s National Gallery for 21st Century Art in Rome, Juilliard Pre-College Percussion Ensemble, Tom Gold Dance ballet company, the Caroga Arts Collective, and many others. As a percussion soloist he appeared at Bard’s Fisher Center and the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall; his performing covers styles including contemporary classical music, electronic music, Americana, folk, and jazz.

Brian is a member of the Caroga Arts Collective, one of the premier un-conducted chamber orchestras in the country. He specializes in quickly writing orchestral arrangements for diverse artists to collaborate with the Caroga Arts Collective, and has produced orchestral scores of works for GRAMMY Award-winning folk singer Sierra Ferrell, pop musicians Eddie Benjamin, Kevin Garrett, and Rich Saunders, jazz vocalist Laurin Thalese, and many others. from His academic writing investigates the connections between music and other artistic mediums, philosophy, and human-centered applications of artificial intelligence. From 2015 to 2020, he worked extensively with the Bridge Arts Ensemble to bring music to public schools in the Adirondack State Park in New York State

Brian earned degrees from The Juilliard School (B.M. Percussion) and the San Francisco Conservatory (M.M. Composition) and is completing a Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Music at the University of California, Irvine. When not working on paradiddles, he’s often birding, cooking, surfing, mountain biking, and golfing.

Brian's most recent orchestral work, Voici venir les temps..., was named a finalist for the American Composer Orchestra's EarShot readings with the Atlanta Symphony in May 2023. He has notably worked with conductor David Robertson and the New Jersey Symphony when his work Into the Rose Garden was selected as a winner of the prestigious Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. His work He has received commissions from The Juilliard Pre-College Percussion Ensemble, CreArt Box, Caroga Lake Music Festival, Tom Gold Dance modern ballet company, The Garage at Chatham, and others. His incidental music theatre includes chamber music for A Clockwork Orange directed by Tony Award-winning actor Alex Sharp in 2014 in New York. Brian was composer-in-residence for The Garage at Chatham in Chatham, NY for the 2023 season. The Garage has commissioned a work for string quartet and vibraphone titled Tribus Capellis. As a percussionist, his playing has been called "valiant" by SF Classical Voice, and "[with] tremendous technique - always in the service of expression" by Arts Alive Publications. Brian was pleased to record and workshop Dariush Derahkshani’s work Pandora’s Box for percussion and electronics that was a finalist in the 2019 Prix CIME Electroacoustic Competition in France. His percussion mentors include Daniel Druckman, Gordon Gottlieb, Joseph Pereira, Richard Albagli, and he has participated in masterclasses with Colin Currie and Nancy Zeltsman. He can be heard on on Grammy-Award winning bassist Geoff Saunder's 2021 album Geophonia, composer Rick Baitz's 2018 album Into Light (Innova Records) in the percussion quartet Hall of Mirrors (video below), on the live album Fiesta at Caroga with the Afro-Caribbean Jazz Collective, and on the soundtrack for the 2017 film Flora which won best score at FilmQuest. He co-produced, was second engineer and performed on a variety of tracks on KASA Quartet's album Forever Wild Vol. 1 (2022) and Vol. 2 (2023). He is currently producing an album of new cello music for cellist Nathan Chan of the Seattle Symphony. His composition teachers have included Philip Lasser and David Conte (MM 2020, San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and he has participated in masterclasses with Kevin Puts and Aleksandra Vrebalov. As a percussionist he has studied with Dan Druckman, Gordon Gottlieb, and Joseph Pereira, and participated in masterclasses with Colin Currie, and Nancy Zeltsman. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School (B.M. Percussion) and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (M.M. Music composition). As an educator, he was a faculty member at the Luzerne Music Center from 2015-2018 and was a core member of the Bridge Arts Ensemble, a teaching arts organization that brought music and art to public schools exclusively in the Adirondack, NY region 2015 to 2020. He is a resident artist with the Caroga Lake Music Festival (CLMF) and is on the Development sub-committee of the Board of Directors for the festival. Through CLMF has toured with Eddie Barbash (founding member of The Late Show's Stay Human band) and KASA Quartet. Brian is an arranger on staff for the Caroga Lake Music Festival and has written orchestral arrangements for the likes of jazz vocalist Laurin Thalese, Sierra Ferrell, vocalist Rich Saunders, Kevin Garrett.