Rhythmic Sounds | Steven Schick
Week of August 31, 2019
Rhythmic Sounds.
The rhythms of nature. The beating of your heart, the rise and fall of the surf, the promise of a child drawing her first breath. The world is full of meaningful, beautiful…and rhythmic…sounds. Join Steven Schick—percussionist, conductor and author—as he explores the world of percussion rhythms and mindful listening. Don’t worry! This is still your vacation. The performance will be gentle, evocative and will draw you into a world of pulses, sonic textures and musical gestures. If you think you’ve heard everything there is to hear on a concert stage, then come take a listen to the percussionist that Alex Ross of “the New Yorker” called, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion, but of any instrument.” It will music for both the ears and the heart.
The Beatles: Listen and Talk with Steven Schick.
In 1963 the Beatles were a promising band just beginning to make a name for themselves. By 1970 they had changed the face of popular music forever. Their metamorphosis is a story of musical genius and the uneasy dreams of an entire generation. Fifty years after “Please Please Me,” they still please us. Let’s listen together and talk about why.
Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. Hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument,” he has championed contemporary percussion music by commissioning or premiering more than one hundred-fifty new works. The most important of these have become core repertory for solo percussion.
Steven Schick is artistic director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. As a conductor, he has appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, Ensemble Modern, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble. He is the curator of, and was most recently conductor and percussion soloist in, “It’s About Time,” a festival of the San Diego Symphony held in January of 2018.
Schick’s publications include a book, The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams, and many articles. He has released numerous recordings including the 2010 “Percussion Works of Iannis Xenakis,” and its companion, “The Complete Early Percussion Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen” in 2014 (both on Mode). He received the “Diapason d’Or” as conductor (Xenakis Ensemble Music with ICE) and the Deutscheschallplattenkritikpreis, as percussionist (Stockhausen), each for the best new music release of 2015. He was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2014.
Steven Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music and holds the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Diego. He was music director of the 2015 Ojai Festival, and starting in 2017, will be co-artistic director, with Claire Chase, of the Summer Music Program at the Banff Centre. In 2018 Schick became the Artistic Director of the Breckenridge Music Festival.