ROBERT SCHULZ, percussion

Drummer/percussionist/timpanist Robert Schulz has long been one of the Boston area’s finest first-call musicians, where he has lived, studied and worked since 1990.  A collaborative chamber musician’s aesthetic, along with an unusually broad musical vocabulary, has led to a career of music making that routinely transcends boundaries of musical style or rigid artistic sensibilities.

He is principal percussionist for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, winner of the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording (Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox), as well as the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva and Dinosaur Annex New Music Ensemble.  With BMOP/Sound, he has organized and performed the innumerable percussive details for over 80 commercially available recordings.  Schulz is principal timpanist for Odyssey Opera (co-winner of the 2019 Grammy), Boston Baroque (America’s original period instrument orchestra), Emmanuel Music (a unique collective with a 48 year tradition of presenting weekly Bach cantatas in a liturgical setting).  He performs regularly with the Boston Symphony, Pops and Ballet Orchestras, the Handel & Haydn Society, A Far Cry, Opera Lafayette, and has been a frequent guest soloist with the Boston Chamber Music Society, First Monday Series at NEC, and the Boston Celebrity Series.  In 2014, Schulz received a Grammy nomination for Best Small Ensemble Performance (Yehudi Wyner’s The Mirror).

Concerto performances include the Tan Dun Water Concerto, Lukas Foss Percussion Concerto, Eric Moe Drumset Concerto and Philip Glass Timpani Fantasy, as well as recital appearances with Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man in Paris, New York, Shanghai and Beijing.  Schulz is a graduate of New England Conservatory, where his principal teachers were Fred Buda (Jazz Studies, 1992) and Frank Epstein (Graduate Diploma in Solo Percussion, 1994).