David Skidmore

Percussion

David Skidmore is active as both a performer and composer of music for percussion. David is a member of Third Coast Percussion, Signal, and the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. He is a dedicated advocate for the music of our time, having commissioned, premiered, and performed dozens of new works by many of the great composers of the 20th and 21st century.

As a chamber musician, David maintains a busy schedule both at home and abroad including performances at Carnegie Hall, Kimmel Center, EMPAC, June in Buffalo, Klangspuren Schwaz, the Ojai Music Festival, the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, the Bang On a Can Marathon, and three Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. David has performed and collaborated with many of the world's finest musicians including conductors Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, and Michael Tilson Thomas, composers Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Eötvos, and chamber ensembles So Percussion and eighth blackbird. David has performed as a soloist in Europe, Asia, and the United States. David has also performed as a member of the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Pacific Music Festival, the National Repertory Orchestra.

David served for 2 years as a fellow in the Academy—a Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute. Through this fellowship, David performed concerts in Carnegie Hall and other venues throughout New York City, and he was a teaching artist in residence at a public school in Ozone Park, Queens.

David's compositions are performed regularly in concert halls and universities across the country. In May of 2007 his piece, Unknown Kind, was premiered at Carnegie Hall. David's latest commission, from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and Sidney K. Robinson, will commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Taliesin, home of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. He has also received commissions from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Rush Hour Concert Series in Chicago, and leading percussion soloists and pedagogues including Michael Burritt, Mark Ford, Dr. John Parks, and Peter Martin. David was awarded 1st prize in the 2005 Percussive Arts Society Composition Contest and 2nd prize in the 2004 contest.

David currently teaches on the percussion faculty of Peabody as an assistant to Robert Van Sice. He received the Bachelor of Music degree from the Northwestern University School of Music and the Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music. His teachers have included Robert Van Sice, Michael Burritt, James Ross, Paul Wertico, and Michael Hernandez.