The Callithumpian Consort is based at New England Conservatory, and was founded by Stephen Drury sometime in the 1990's.  Dedicated to the proposition that music is an experience, the Consort has performed music by John Cage, Morton Feldman, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giacinto Scelsi, Ivan Tcherepnin, Iannis Xenakis, Lee Hyla, David Shea, Pierre Boulez, Franco Donatoni, Paul Elwood, John Heiss, Louis Andriessen, Christian Wolff, Earle Brown, Lukas Foss, and others.  Recordings on Tzadik and Mode Records.

Noted as "a standout inspiration", Scott Deal is an active performer of new works. His appearances as a soloist or chamber musician include venues in London, Atlanta, Boston, Washington DC, Moscow, and at the Sub Tropics New Music Festival, May in Miami, SEAMUS International Electronic Music Conference, Northwest Percussion Festival and Percussive Arts Society (PAS) 2001 and 2005 International Conventions. Composers whose works he has premiered include John Luther Adams, Matthew Burtner, Robin Cox, Emma Lou Diemer, David Heuser, Dorothy Hindman, Charles Norman Mason, Greg Mrytle, Nick Ramliak, Carlos Surinach, John Van der Slice and Henry Wolking.

A specialist in melding music with new technology, he is a founding member ART GRID, an Internet2, telematic performing ensemble comprised of a multi-disciplinary group of musicians, artists, dancers and actors. In conjunction with ART GRID, he has formed one of the world’s first student telematic ensembles at UAF. Recently Dr. Deal completed a series of articles and video demonstrations on the topic of percussion technology for the 3rd edition of Teaching Percussion by Gary Cook. In 2005 Dr. Deal launched the Alaska Summer Percussion Institute in the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, a two-week intensive of performance training in classical, world and jazz mediums.

As a student, he was past winner or finalist in several prestigious competitions, including the Music Teacher's National Association Collegiate Artist Competition (1st place), the Cincinnati Conservatory Concerto Competition (winner), the Percussive Arts Society International Solo Marimba Competition (2nd place), and the Louise D. McMahon International Artist Competition for Wind and Percussion Instruments (finalist). He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of Miami, where as a scholarship student he studied with Fred Wickstrom and Ney Rosauro. He received a Master of Music degree from the University of Cincinnati, studying with the Percussion Group Cincinnati, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cameron University, studying with Dr. James Lambert.
He was previously the Timpanist/Principal Percussionist of the Miami Symphony, and on the faculty of the New World School of the Arts, where in 1994 he was voted teacher of the year. In 1995 he moved to Alaska and launched the percussion program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has served as Principal Percussionist of the Fairbanks Symphony, Timpanist of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, and is currently on the artist faculty for the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. He has been a contributor to Percussive Notes Magazine, and serves regularly as an adjudicator, lecturer and clinician throughout the United States. Dr. Deal is a Yamaha Artist, and endorses Sabian cymbals and Pro-Mark drum sticks.

Well-known as a champion of twentieth-century music, Institute director Stephen Drury has given performances throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Latin America, soloing with orchestras from San Diego to Bucharest. A prizewinner in several competitions, including the Concert Artists Guild, Affiliate Artists, and Carnegie Hall/Rockefeller competitions, his repertoire stretches from Bach, Mozart, and Liszt to the music of today. The U.S. State Department sponsored two concert tours that enabled him to take the sounds of dissonance to Paris, Hong Kong, Greenland, Pakistan, Prague, and Japan. He has appeared as conductor and pianist at the Angelica Festival in Italy, the MusikTriennale Köln in Germany, Spoleto Festival USA, and with the Britten Sinfonia in England, as well as at Roulette and the Knitting Factory in New York. Drury has also performed with Merce Cunningham and Mikhail Barishnikov in the Lincoln Center Festival, at Alice Tully Hall as part of the Great Day in New York Festival, with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and with the Seattle Chamber Players in Seattle and Moscow. A champion of 20th-century music, Drury’s critically acclaimed performances range from the piano sonatas of Charles Ives to works by John Cage and György Ligeti. He premiered the solo part of John Cage’s 1O1 with the Boston Symphony and gave the first performance of John Zorn’s concerto for piano and orchestra Aporias with Dennis Russell Davies and the Cologne Radio Symphony. He has commissioned new works from Cage, Zorn, Terry Riley, Lee Hyla, and Chinary Ung. Drury has given masterclasses at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, Mannes Beethoven Institute and throughout the world, and served on juries for the Concert Artist Guild and Orléans Concours International de Piano XXème Siècle Competitions.  His recordings include music by Beethoven, Liszt, Stockhausen, Ravel, Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Frederic Rzewski, John Cage, Colin McPhee, and John Zorn.

For more please visit http://www.stephendrury.com/

Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1947, Louis Goldstein’s early piano study was with a wonderful private teacher named Margaret Schmidt.  Further studies occurred at Interlochen Arts Academy, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music (BM), California Institute of the Arts (MFA), and Eastman School of Music (DMA and Performer’s Certificate), including piano study with Joseph Hungate, Rudolf Ganz, Leonid Hambro, and David Burge.

Long fascinated with music of his own time, Dr. Goldstein was co-founder and co-director of the California New Music Ensemble and an associate member of the Los Angeles Group for Contemporary Music and Newband, in New York City.  In ensembles and as a soloist, he has championed cutting edge work of current composers.  His faculty recitals at Wake Forest present an absorbing blend of past masters such as Haydn, Beethoven, and Debussy, 20th-century giants such as Copland and Stockhausen, and the latest innovations of today.  His CD recordings of John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes, Dream, and One5, and Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories have garnered accolades from print and internet sources as well as fellow musicians.

Another special interest of Dr. Goldstein’s is American music.  For 15 years he was on the faculty of the American Foundations Program at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art.  He is also an active member of the Society for American Music.

Over the years, Dr. Goldstein has been active as a recitalist, accompanist, and ensemble member, and has appeared as a soloist in such venues as New England Conservatory, Yale, Carnegie Recital Hall, the Universities of Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, and Florida State, as well as in Canada, The Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Israel.  At Wake Forest he teaches Piano, Piano Literature, First Year Seminars, and Introduction to Western Music, and is also Director of the Christopher Giles and Lucille S. Harris Competitions in Musical Performance and the Student Showcase Recital.

Born in Tokyo in 1947, Jo Kondo graduated from the composition department of Tokyo University of Arts in 1972. He spent a year in New York on a scholarship from the John D. Rockefeller III Fund in 1977-78. In 1979 he taught as guest lecturer at University of Victoria, British Columbia, invited by the Canada Council, and in 1986 resided in London as a British Council Senior Fellow. In 1987 he was composer in residence at Hartt School of Music, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, and taught at Dartington International Summer School in England. At present he is Professor of Music at Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, and also teaches at Tokyo University of Arts and Elisabeth University of Music in Hiroshima.

In 1980 Kondo founded the Musica Practica Ensemble, a chamber orchestra devoted to contemporary music, and was artistic director of the group until its disbandment in 1991.

He has written more than eighty compositions, ranging from solo pieces to orchestral and electronic works, which have been widely performed in Japan, North America and Europe and recorded on Hat Art, ALM, Fontec Deutsche Grammophon and other labels. He has received commissions from numerous organisations, and his music has been featured at many international music festivals. Performers associated with his music include the conductor Tadaaki Otaka, the pianist Aki Takahashi, the Ives and Nieuw Ensembles in the Netherlands, the London Sinfonietta and many others.

Kondo has written extensively on musical matters, and since 1979 he has published four books spelling out in detail his own aesthetic and compositional ideas. He is also an associate editor of Contemporary Music Review. During 2000 he directed the composition classes at the Dartington International School of Music and was on the jury of the Gaudeamus International Composer's competition, and was a featured composer at the 2005 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

"Each sound must have its own entity and life. What I am doing in my compositions is to create a web of intertonal relationships, while trying to safeguard the possibility of aurally perceiving the individual entity and life of every single tone in that relationship." - Jo Kondo

MATHIAS REUMERT is a Danish multiple percussionist and marimba/vibraphone performer. A specialist of contemporary music, he received the First Prize at the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition 2007 in Amsterdam, Holland, the first percussion soloist to do so since 1979.

Reumert has given solo recitals at major festivals in the USA, France, Holland, Poland, and throughout Scandinavia. He has has worked with composers such as Steve Reich, Roger Reynolds, Chaya Czernowin, Per Nørgård and Bent Sørensen, and has premiered solo works by Hans Peter Stubbe Teglbjærg and Kim Helweg among others.

His recording of Poul Ruders' concerto for percussion and orchestra 'Monodrama' will be released on DACAPO Records in late 2008.

Trained in classical music, Reumert is also an avid improviser, music theater performer, and composer. As a member of the PACE Percussion Trio, he performed as the opening act at the 2002 FIFA World Cup of Soccer concert in Seoul, Korea, and has since been touring extensively performing original music. Other ensemble activities include the Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, a trio project with the Duo Disecheis from Italy, and a duo with Swedish electronics wiz Mattias Sköld.

As a student, Mathias Reumert was past winner of several competitions, including the Concours International de Vibraphone 2002 in France and the Percussive Arts Society Solo Vibraphone Contest 2004. He studied with Steven Schick at the University of California, San Diego, and with Gert Mortensen at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

He lives in Copenhagen, where he teaches a course for professional musicians at Artlab (www.artlab.dk).

www.mathiasreumert.com

Yukiko Takagi received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the New England Conservatory where she studied with Veronica Jochum and Stephen Drury.  While a student at the Conservatory she was selected to perform in several Honors programs and appeared regularly with the NEC Contemporary Ensemble.  Ms. Takagi has performed with the orchestra of the Bologna Teatro Musicale, the John Zorn Ensemble, the Auros Group for New Music, Santa Cruz New Music Works, the Harvard Group for New Music and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble.  She performs regularly with the Eliza Miller Dance Company and the Ruth Birnberg Dance Company and gives frequent duo-piano concerts with Stephen Drury.  Ms. Takagi is a featured performer with the Callithumpian Consort.  Her recording of Colin McPhee’s Balinese Cerimonial Dances was released by MusicMasters.  At New England Conservatory Yukiko Takagi has appeared on the First Monday series at Jordan Hall, and is a teacher and guest artist for NEC's Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance.

Aki Takahashi made her public debut shortly after graduating from the Tokyo University of Arts with a masters degree in 1970. While acknowledged for her classical musicianship, her enthusiasm and acclaim as a new music interpreter have attracted the attention of many composers. Cage, Feldman, Takemitsu, Yun, Oliveros, Ruders, Satoh, Lucier and Garland, to name a few, have all created works for her.

Ms. Takahashi received the first Kenzo Nakajima prize in 1982, and was recipient of the first Kyoto Music Award (1986). She directed the "New Ears" concert series in Yokohama (1983-97), was artist-in-residence at SUNY Buffalo (1980-81) and guest professor at the California Institute of the Arts (1984).

Her landmark recording of 20 contemporary piano works, Aki Takahashi Piano Space, received the Merit Prize at the Japan Art Festival (1973). Her series of Erik Satie concerts (1975-77) heralded a Satie boom in Japan, resulting in her editing all of his piano works for Zen-On and recording them on Toshiba-EMI. She created the Hyper-Beatles project with Toshiba, which invited 47 international composers to arrange/recompose their favorite Beatles tunes.

Ms. Wood has appeared as soprano soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Israel, London, New York, San Francisco, and American Composers Orchestras under the direction of John Adams, Dennis Russell Davies, Jacob Druckman, Zubin Mehta, and Michael Tilson Thomas.  She has concertized throughout the Caribbean, Europe, and North America.  Recognized for her work with twentieth-century composers, she has premiered and recorded with Steve Reich & Musicians on the Angel, ECM, Nonesuch, and Revels labels; has been acclaimed for her performances of monodramatic operas including Dominick Argento's Miss Havisham's Wedding Night and Nancy Van de Vate's A Night in the Royal Ontario Museum; and is in demand as a workshop clinician in the areas of voice, solfège, and folk song research.  She has studied with Eunice Alberts, Olga Averino, R. Louise Burge, Sylvia Olden Lee, David Blair McClosky, Donna Roll, Rawn Spearman, and Paul Ulanowsky; and earned the B. Mus. Ed. at Howard University, M.M. in Performance at University of Massachusetts, and Advanced Certificates at the Kodály Musical Training Institute and the Kodály Center of America.  Ms. Wood serves as a member of the Boards of the Kodály Center of America and the Boston Children's Chorus, on the Faculty of the Kodály Music Institute at the New England Conservatory, and as Senior Lecturer in Music at MIT.  Her achievements are cited in Marquis' Who's Who.