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 (MAXXI), 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 (NY), the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall (NY), and Divadlo X10 (Prague, CZ); 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 Cody Fry, Eddie Benjamin, Kevin Garrett, and Rich Saunders, jazz vocalist Laurin Thalese, and many others. 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 over 50,000 public school students annually in the Adirondack State Park in New York State.

Brian earned degrees from The Juilliard School (Bachelors in  Percussion) and the San Francisco Conservatory (Masters in 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.