Introducing Steven Schick

We are pleased to announce the appointment of internationally renowned conductor and percussionist Steven Schick as our new Artistic Director. For the past thirty years Schick has championed contemporary percussion music as a conductor, performer, and teacher, by commissioning and premiering more than one hundred new works by composers as varied as Brian Ferneyhough, David Lang, and Iannis Xenakis. Schick will serve as both conductor and chief artistic administrator, and our 2011-12 season will feature Schick’s programming for the subscription series at Herbst Theater beginning in October.

"The forty-year tradition of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players establishes it as one of this country's most venerable and important ensembles for contemporary music; and the terrific musicians of the group and their commitment to cutting-edge musical ideas means that it is also an ensemble of the future,” he said. “What a thrill it is for me to now be part of an organization that is both roots and rhizomes. We know where we're from; where and how we'll grow next is the exciting part!"

In great demand as a performer, Steven Schick will make a number of appearances in New York in February. He is to perform John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit and Louis Andriessen’s Worker's Union as part of the eighth blackbird-curated Tune-In Festival at the Armory and as conductor and percussionist in The International Contemporary Ensemble’s Alice Tully Hall performances. In March, he appears in Schick Machine, an evening length solo musical theater work created especially for him by the Paul Dresher Ensemble at San Francisco’s Theater Artaud. Schick’s percussion ensemble, red fish blue fish, will be featured in the new Peter Sellars production of George Crumb’s Winds of Destiny in June at the Ojai Festival in Ojai, California and at Ojai North! presented by Cal Performances in Berkeley.

“Steven Schick is an exciting, brilliant, and extraordinary contemporary musician,” says Richard Lee, President of the Board. “The unanimous choice among a field of 90 candidates, Steven brings an international reputation and a lifetime of engagement with contemporary music. We look forward to his inspiring leadership of our gifted ensemble.”

Percussion has often played a central role in contemporary music and there is no doubt that percussionists are more and more moving from within the ensemble to the podium. In a recent article about this trend, New York Times critic Allan Kozinn even proclaimed that “drums are the new violins,” going on to make a point that the percussion discipline is excellent training for understanding the dense polyphonic textures of today’s contemporary music. Steven Schick is just such a case, a musician who artfully combines conducting and percussion performance to weave a unique international career. In addition to working with SFCMP, Schick is Music Director and conductor of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, a post he has held since 2007.

Mark Swed from the Los Angeles Times described a recent performance of Xenakis’s Rebonds as featuring “the intelligence of a computer, the body of an athlete, and the pose of a dancer” and his performances of Stockhausen’s Zyklus “were enthralling” according to The Times in London. Also highly regarded for his teaching, Schick serves as Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego and as Consulting Artist in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music.

He was the percussionist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars of New York City from 1992-2002, and from 2000 to 2004 served as Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland. His book on solo percussion music, The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams, was published by the University of Rochester Press; his recording of The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies by John Luther Adams was released by Cantaloupe Music; and a 3 CD set of the complete percussion music of Iannis Xenakis, made in collaboration with red fish blue fish, was issued by Mode Records.

From his roots on a family farm in Iowa, Schick’s first experience with music began as a drummer in a rock band. When he entered the University of Iowa, he realized that, in his words, "contemporary percussion music was rewriting all the rules. It was the newest, most exciting, and most provocative music around. I said good-bye to the rock band (and to my parents’ aspirations to have a doctor in the family) and embraced the raw, vital sounds of percussion music."