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Known
for his innovative blend of performance, teaching and research, Michael Schutz is currently
an Assistant Professor at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario where he is associated with the
McMaster
Institute for Music and the Mind. His duties entail
running the
MAPLE Lab (researching Music, Perception, Acoustics and
LEarning), supervising honours projects in music cognition,
directing the McMaster University Percussion Ensemble, and
teaching the percussion methods course for music education
majors. Additionally, he serves as Chair of the PAS (Percussive Arts
Society) Music Technology Committee, and maintains an active
career as a freelance percussionist.
Prior
to moving to Canada, he served as the Director of Percussion
Studies at Longwood University (2004- 2009) and an Instructor in
Percussion at the Virginia Commonwealth University (2007-2009).
During this time, he performed regularly with many Central
Virginia ensembles including the Roanoke Symphony, Opera on the James, Oratorio Society of Charlottesville-Albemarle,
and the Wintergreen Orchestra. He has also given invited
solo performances at the University of Virginia, Penn State
University, and Goucher College, in addition to
the Virginia/DC "Day of Percussion," Project:Percussion
Festival, and the 2006 Alvin Lucier Festival.
In November of 2009, Michael made his third appearance at PASIC, performing Peter Traub's Groundloops: For Percussion and Internet His previous PASIC appearances include a lecture on his music cognition research in 2008, and a world premier of internationally renowned composer Judith Shatin's trio Time To Burn at PASIC 2006 along with percussionist I-Jen Fang and oboist Scott Perry. Other world premiers include Gordon Ring’s Magnificat, as well as chamber works by Brett Dietz, Mekara Chaipruk, Rob Reinhart and Peter Buck. Additional efforts to contribute to the percussion canon include arrangements of orchestral pieces for percussion ensemble as well as marimba transcriptions of solo works for the guitar, violin, and piano. These efforts to include transcriptions in the college curriculum led to his clinic titled Musical Perspective at the 2005 Virginia/DC Day of Percussion.
A
prize-winning researcher, he has published on topics ranging
from the role of visual information in music perception and
parallels in the communication of emotion in language and music,
to the computer aided analysis of post-tonal music. In addition
to presentations at conferences in Illinois, Indiana, Florida,
Missouri, Pennsylvania, Utah, Massachusetts, California,
Ontario, and Québec, Michael has spoken abroad at the
International Conference on Music and Gesture hosted by the
Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK), the
International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition
(Bologna, Italy), and the Acoustics '08/Acoustical Society of
America Conference (Paris, France). Other
conference presentations include the Association for Technology
in Music Instruction, Acoustical Society of America, Vision
Sciences Society, and Music Language and the Mind. His
publications appear in both Percussive Notes and
Percussive News, as well as the Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, Attention,
Perception & Psychophysics, Empirical Musicology
Review, Canadian Acoustics, and Perception.
Additionally, he has given invited lectures on his
research at James Madison University, Radford University,
Lynchburg University, Goucher College, Penn
State University, as well as the Virginia/DC and Maryland Days
of Percussion.
During
his time serving as Director of Percussion Studies at Longwood University in
(2004-2009), the percussion studio saw tremendous growth in both
size and quality. Under his direction, the
percussion
ensemble developed into one of the premier ensembles at the
university, performing four on-campus concerts each year in
addition to their annual spring tour bringing percussion
ensemble literature to high school programs in the central
Virginia area.
In demand as an educator and adjudicator, Michael regularly gave clinics and
performances at festivals, to high school percussion
departments, and for youth music programs across the state.
Committed to incorporating research on music cognition into the
standard university music curriculum, he created a special
topics course on the Science of Music, focused on
educating future performers and teachers about the importance of
music perception and cognition.
In recognition of his contributions to the
Percussive Arts Society, he was appointed Chair of the
Music Technology Committee by PAS President Gary Cook in 2007.
In this capacity, he is a strong advocate for using technology
as a tool for enhancing the quality of music education and music
performance. Previous
teaching appointments include serving as the Director of
Percussion Studies at Longwood University (2004 - 2009), Adjunct
instructor of percussion at Virginia Commonwealth University
(2007-2009), and a faculty member at Blue Lake Fine
Arts Camp in Twin Lake, Michigan (2003 & 2004). Michael is grateful for the support provided by Sabian and
Innovative Percussion, whose
products he is proud to endorse. Michael earned the MM
in Percussion Performance and Music Technology from Northwestern
University and the BMA in Percussion Performance along with a BS
in Computer Science from Penn State University. Additionally, he
holds an MA and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology (Cognitive
area) from the University of Virginia.
His percussion teachers include marimba
virtuoso Michael Burritt, Dan Armstrong, Gifford Howarth, Ken Harbison,
and Randy Eyles.
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