Gwendolyn Burgett
Percussion
Gwendolyn Burgett is associate professor of percussion at the Michigan State University College of Music. She has maintained a career as an active solo, chamber, and orchestral musician, giving recitals in the U.S., Asia, and South America. An advocate for new music, she has participated in groups to commission new works from composers such as Alejandro Vinao, Peter Klatzow, Paul Lansky, and Martin Bresnick. The winner of the Keiko Abe Prize at the second World Marimba Competition in Okaya, Japan, Ms. Burgett was also the top prize winner at the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ ARTS competition. She has studied with Robert Van Sice, Keiko Abe, and John Beck and holds degrees from the Interlochen Arts Academy, Eastman School of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and Yale School of Music. She regularly gives master classes throughout the U.S.
Tom Freer
Percussion
Tom Freer has served as assistant principal timpani and member of the percussion section of the Cleveland Orchestra since 1991. Prior to his appointment with Cleveland, he was principal timpani with the Alabama Symphony (1989-91) and The Fort Wayne Philharmonic (1987-89) and also principal percussion/assistant timpani with the Norrköpings Symfoniorkester in Sweden (1986-87). A graduate of the Cleveland Institute, Mr. Freer’s teachers have included Cloyd Duff, Paul Yancich, Richard Weiner, Jim Atwood, and Mario Gaetano. He is a frequent clinician and coordinator of timpani and percussion studies at Cleveland State University.
Robert van Sice
Percussion
Robert van Sice is considered one of the world's foremost performers of contemporary music for marimba. In an effort to establish the instrument as a serious artistic vehicle, he has premiered over 100 works throughout the world. Four of the seminal works in the marimba repertoire were written for him; Peter Klatzow's Dances of Earth and Fire, Alejandro Vinao's Estudios de Frontera, Martin Bresnick's double marimba concerto, Grace, and James Wood's Spirit Festival with Lamentations. Spirit Festival is unique in introducing the newly developed quarter-tone marimba, an innovative instrument recalling the marimba's ancient sonic routes while establishing new parameters for modern expressionism.
In his varied performing career, Mr. van Sice has appeared as a soloist with symphony orchestras and given recitals in more than 30 countries throughout Europe, North America, Africa, and the Far East. The Journal de Geneve describes his interpretation of Toru Takemitsu's concerto Gitimalya as marvelous. In his hands, the marimba becomes a voice with richness of sound and expression that one would never expect from a percussion instrument. A well-deserved triumph. He is frequently invited to appear as a soloist with Europe's leading contemporary music ensembles, including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva and L'Itineraire in Paris. Mr. van Sice has also appeared as a soloist with many of percussion's finest ensembles including Amadinda, Kroumata, Tambuco, Percussive Rotterdam, and So Percussion.
In 1989, Mr. van Sice gave the first solo marimba recital at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has since appeared in many of world's major concert halls in London, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Milan, Stockholm, Oslo, Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Toronto, Mexico City, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His concerts have frequently been broadcast by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Norwegian Radio, Radio France, WDR, and NPR, among many others. He is a frequent guest at major music festivals throughout the world, such as Ars Musica, Blossom, Darmstadt Course for New Music, Archipel, London Meltdown, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Bela Bartok Festival in Hungary, North American New Music Festival and the Ultima Festival in Oslo. Long a champion of the music of Olivier Messiaen, Mr. van Sice has performed on numerous occasions as a soloist alongside the composer's wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod.
Mr. van Sice is also one of the world's most respected percussion teachers. His former students play in symphony orchestras, contemporary chamber ensembles, and maintain solo careers in more than twenty countries. His students have won prizes the world over in both chamber music and solo competitions. In 1997, he was appointed director of percussion studies at the Yale University School of Music. He subsequently joined the faculties of the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and the Curtis Institute of Music. From 1988 to 1997, he headed Europe's first diploma program for solo marimbists at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands. Mr. van Sice has given over 400 master classes in 25 countries, including the Royal College of Music in London, Amsterdam Conservatory, Vienna State Music Academy, The Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music, and Oberlin College. He often serves on juries of international competitions and has released six CDs on the Etcetera, Mode and New World labels. For the last 15 years, Mr. van Sice has collaborated with the Adams Corporation in the Netherlands in the design of a series of marimbas bearing his name.
Nasar Abadey
Jazz Percussion
Drummer and composer Nasar Abadey is the founder, leader, and driving force of SUPERNOVA®, which performs music from the threshold of jazz to beyond space and time, expressing their compositions through traditional African rhythms, bebop, fusion, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Brazilian, modal, and free form. Based in Washington, DC, Abadey has also built a solid reputation as a sideman with several groups, and has recorded and performed with many national artists throughout his career. Abadey began playing drums at age five, drawing influences from powerhouse drummers such as Tony Williams, Max Roach, Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, and his cousin Frankie Dunlop, to name a few. Nasar Abadey creates music which he refers to as Multi-D: multi-dimensional and multi-directional.
Under Abadey's leadership, SUPERNOVA's® debut CD, Mirage, was released in 2000 on the Amosaya Records label, and their sophomore CD, Diamond in the Rough, was released on DPC Records in 2011. In 2014, SUPERNOVA® was invited by Jason Moran to the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage to perform in recognition of International Jazz Appreciation Day. SUPERNOVA® also recently toured Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Mozambique as musical ambassadors for the US State Department's American Music Abroad Rhythm Road. Abadey is also founder and director of the big band, the Washington Renaissance Orchestra, which premiered a concert at the historic Lincoln Theatre in Washington, DC, in June, 2013, as a tribute to African American Music Month, and was named Best Large Ensemble of 2014 by the Washington City Paper. Prior to forming SUPERNOVA® he was co-founder/leader, along with Joe Ford and Paul Gresham, of BIRTHRIGHT, and co-producer of two albums, Free Spirits and Breath of Life.
Named the 2011 Best Drummer in Jazz by the Washington City Paper, Abadey has performed with many jazz greats, and has appeared in music festivals internationally. His credits include Amiri Baraka, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Rouse, Gary Bartz, David Sanchez, Cyrus Chestnut, Gregory Porter, Sonny Fortune, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Kenny Kirkland, Gary Thomas, Stanley Turrentine, Sun Ra, Frank Morgan, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders, Russell Malone, Malachi Thompson, Andrew White, and many others. He has made festival appearances including San Remo (Italy), Montreal (Canada), Cap City (DC), Virgin Islands (Caribbean), JVC (New York City), Morocco (Africa), Chicago Jazz Festival, Iowa City Jazz Festival, DC Loft Jazz Festival, Atlanta Jazz Festival, Mellon Bank Jazz Festival (Philadelphia), East Coast Jazz Festival, Free World Jazz Festival (DC), International Children's Festival (Seattle), Guatemala City Jazz Festival, Duke Ellingon Festival, DC Jazz Festival, and the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival.
Abadey has been awarded grants and honors for performance, merit, and composition by the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, Creative Arts Performance Services (CAPS), the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Prince George's Arts Council. He has served as music panelist for the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and is a board member of the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts (WALA).
