Brian Shank is a composer and percussionist and a graduate of the Juilliard
School (2014). He has appeared as a soloist at Bard’s Fisher Center and Troy
Music Hall and his work spans a variety of styles to include contemporary-
classical music, electronic and electro-acoustic music.
Recently, he was commissioned by the Italian National Gallery for 21st
Century art in Rome (MAXXI) and artist Alex Cecchetti for an acappella work
to score Cecchetti's larger work “Come la luna si vede a volte in pieno
giorno" involving the music, choreography, and installation. The work was
performed by The Choir of the Rome Opera.
Much of his work focuses on orchestral music and he has notably worked
with conductor David Robertson and the New Jersey Symphony when his
work Into the Rose Garden selected as a winner of the prestigious Edward T.
Cone Composition Institute at Princeton University. He has received
commissions from The Juilliard Pre-College Percussion Ensemble, CreArt
Box, Caroga Lake Music Festival, Tom Gold Dance modern ballet company
and others. His incidental music theatre work includes music for A
Clockwork Orange directed by Tony award-winning actor Alex Sharp in 2014
in New York.
As a performer, his playing has been called "valiant" by SF Classical Voice,
and "[with] tremendous technique – always in the service of expression" by
Arts Alive Publications and he performs with the Æon Ensemble and Andy
Clausen’s Split Stream Big Band in New York City. He can be heard on
Grammy-Award winning bassist Geoff Saunder's 2021 album Geophonia,
composer Rick Baitz's 2018 album Into Light (Innova Records) in the
percussion quartet Hall of Mirrors (video below), on the soundtrack for the
2017 film Flora which won best score at FilmQuest, and on an upcoming
release by the KASA String Quartet.
As a composer he has studied and participated in masterclasses with Philip
Lasser, David Conte, David Garner, and Aleksandra Vrebelov. As a
percussionist he has studied and participated in masterclasses with Dan
Druckman, Gordon Gottlieb, Joseph Pereira, Colin Currie, and Nancy
Zeltsman. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School (B.M. Percussion) and
the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (M.M. Music composition).
As an educator, he was a faculty member at the Luzerne Music Center from
2015-2018 and was a teaching artist with the Bridge Arts Ensemble, an
organization that brings music and art to public schools exclusively in the
Adirondack, NY region 2015 to 2020.
Upcoming projects include an album of original unmeasured preludes for
various instruments and an album of contemporary music for electronics
and vibraphone. Brian currently resides in Kinderhook, New York.