N. Scott Robinson

Cooperman Bodhran Solo

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Riq Solo by N. Scott Robinson

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Decora 43 Cajon Solo by N. Scott Robinson

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Cooperman Ghaval Solo by N. Scott Robinson

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BIO

N. Scott Robinson, world percussionist, scholar, and teacher, has performed on the Grammy Award-winning CD Harlem Renaissance with the Benny Carter Big Band. He has also performed or recorded with Glen Velez, Marilyn Horne, Paul Winter Consort, Malcolm Dalglish, Robert “Tigger” Benford, Oxymora, Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman, Howard Levy, Layne Redmond, Benoit Moerlen, Giovanni Hidalgo, John Clark, Steve Gorn, Jon Gibson, Jeanie Bryson, R. Carlos Nakai, Peter Phippen, Vivien Ellis, Gary Stroutsos, Art Baron, Ken Filiano, Howard Johnson, J. D. Parran, Eugene Friesen, Paul Halley, Slats Klug, Michael DeLalla, Nóiríin Ní Riain, Peter Zummo, Daniel Palomo Vinuesa, Randy Crafton, Mark Holland, Ron Warren, Jeff Ball, Dawn Avery, Peter Mayer, Jim Mayer, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Washington Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, and Gerald Alston. Scott has worked under the direction of composers John Cage, George Crumb, Halim El-Dabh, and Annea Lockwood, having recorded two CDs with the Annea Lockwood Ensemble. He has studied with Peter Erskine, Glen Velez, William Moersch, Naná Vasconcelos, Malcolm Dalglish, Keith Copeland, Indian musicians N. Amrit, Srirangam R. Kannan, B. Shree Sundar Kumar, T. V. Vasan, N. Seetharaman, N. Ganesh Kumar & T. H. Subash Chandran, and Shona musicians Chaka Chawasarira & Cosmas Magaya. Scott has produced two CDs of his music including World View (1994) and Things That Happen Fast (2001) released and distributed internationally by United One Records/Qualiton Imports. He also has an instructional video published called Hand Drumming: Exercises for Unifying Technique for udu (1996) distributed by Wright Hand Drum. Ten scores of his world percussion compositions (three of which are commissions) have been published by HoneyRock Publishing and New World View Music in 2003-2006. His music has been featured on the nationally syndicated Public Radio International show Echoes by John Diliberto, among others.
As a solo artist, Scott brings a breadth of diverse experience in world percussion traditions to the stage and classroom. He has given clinics on diverse styles of hand drumming at the Japan Percussion Center in Tokyo, Japan in 1994, for the Percussive Arts Society VA/DC Chapter Day of Percussion in 1996, and at the Percussive Arts Society International Conventions in Nashville, TN in 1996, in Anaheim, California in 1997, at the MD/DE Chapter Day of Percussion in 2004, and most recently at PASIC in Columbus, OH in 2007. Scott was Artist-in-Residence for the Percussion Departments of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY in 2004, Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL in 2005, University of Missouri-Columbia in Columbia, MO in 2006, and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA in January & March in 2007 (where an entire percussion ensemble concert was devoted to his music).
Scott’s national performance experience includes appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theater, St. Peter’s Church, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and the Knitting Factory all in New York as well as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, Severance Hall in Cleveland, Blues Alley in Baltimore, and elsewhere. His international performance experience began in 1999 when he was invited to teach samul nori percussionists West African rhythm for The Seoul Performing Arts Company in South Korea. In 2000, Scott toured Australia with Malcolm Dalglish performing his own solo pieces for tambourines and a variety of folk music. Scott was the only soloist invited to perform at the 2001 Korea Drum Festival in Seoul, South Korea. In 2003 & 2004, he was invited to South Korea to be a part of the Seoul and Busan modern dance improvisation festivals and in 2004, the Seoul Drum Festival with his world percussion trio, Handful. In 2005, he was invited as guest lecturer at the Department of Indian Music at the University of Madras in Chennai, India where he did presentations on modern frame drumming and performed in a cross-cultural concert of fusion music. In 2008, he was the main artist at the Greek Frame Drums Meeting in Mesolóngi, Greece where he performed a solo concert on world percussion and taught master classes on his unique method for frame drums.
His teaching experience includes teaching applied music and academic course at all levels from undergraduate to graduate. He currently teaches Applied Music – World Percussion at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland and courses in American, world, and popular musics at Towson University, Maryland. Previously, he has served as faculty at Montgomery College in Maryland, Shenandoah University in Virginia, The University of Akron in Ohio, and at Kent State University in Ohio.
Scott's academic education includes a diverse background in performance, composition, and scholarship. He studied with jazz drummers Joe Hunt, Skip Haden, Ed Uribe, Dave Weigert, and John Ramsey at the Berklee College of Music in Boston from 1983-1984. He then studied classical percussion with Gary Van Dyke and Ray DesRoches briefly at William Paterson University in 1985 where he performed with the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble. In 1989, he began his studies of jazz and classical music at Rutgers University where his teachers included composers Noel DaCosta, Phil Corner, Daniel Goode, jazz musicians Keith Copland, Kenny Baron, Bill Fielder, classical percussionist William Moersch, and modern dance composer and world percussionist Robert "Tigger" Benford. Scott studied ethnomusicology, musicology, and culture studies at Kent State University from 1996-2003 with Terry Miller, William Kenney, Robert West, and Halim El-Dabh. He is a graduate of Rutgers University (B.A. in 1994) and Kent State University (M.A. in 2002, currently ABD for Ph.D.).
As a scholar, his published work remains focused on issues relevant to percussionists and includes interviews and articles published in Modern Drummer, Percussive Notes, Rhythm Music, Dulcimer Players News, Batera & Percussão (Brazil), and the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 2: Performance and Production, among others. Scott has presented academic papers on Brazilian percussion at regional and international meetings of The Society for Ethnomusicology in 2002. He was awarded a Senior Performing Arts Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies to study and research percussion in South Indian Carnatic music in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala in India during 2005-2006.
He is the Director of the North American Frame Drum Association, Inc., and one of the principal organizers of the annual NAFDA Frame Drum Festival, which features top international frame drum artists from around the world presenting concerts and workshops in Indian, Brazilian, Irish, Italian, Arabic, Uzbek, Persian, and Spanish world percussion styles. In March 2008, Scott co-presented the debut NAFDA festival, the first ever such frame drum event in the USA, in Mendham, NJ. Scott often works closely with respected manufacturers of a variety of world percussion and in 2008 Cooperman produced two new frame drums, a 12” bendir and a 22” bodhrán, based on N. Scott Robinson’s specifications.
New Frame Drums Group on My Space.com - http://groups.myspace.com/framedrums