Robyn Schulkowsky, percussionist, was born and raised in South Dakota. She has been an innovator and collaborator all her life. Robyn Schulkowsky began her studies in Iowa, Germany, and then went on solo international tours to share the joys of percussion with people around the globe. Many new instruments have been developed through her constant exploration of sound dimensions. Robyn Schulkowsky, a musician who has been active on five continents since the heyday of adventurous and experimental classical composition, moved to Germany in order to pursue her passion for sound. She has recorded and premiered some of the greatest percussion pieces of the 20th century and 21st. This was in collaboration with composers like John Cage, Kevin Volans and Morton Feldman. They presented their works on tours that took her to the former Soviet Union, India and Africa as well as major European music festivals. Robyn Schulkowsky is known for her adventurous nature, which allows her to connect with extraordinary project partners and alternative performance venues. Her multi-media collaborations include the legendary African drummer Kofi Ghanaba, avant-garde visual artist Guenther Uncker, Edith Clever, Sasha Waltz, groundbreaking choreographer Sasha Waltz and the founder of Drums Summit Bonn. Robyn Schulkowsky is passionate about education. As founder of Rhythm Lab in 1998, Robyn Schulkowsky has traveled to many cities with drumming workshops. She incorporates indigenous patterns and styles from all over the world and engages students, professionals, and aficionados in workshops and concerts. The project is primarily aimed at teenagers and children, and focuses on music as an experience, not a product. It aims to make rhythm tangible through experimentation with music, sound, and movement. Robyn Schulkowsky collaborates closely with Lukas Kuehne (sound artist), to achieve this goal. Together, they developed new percussion instruments. In spring 2009, she collaborated with 100 budding musicians to create her new music-theater project. It was based on Antigone’s story and was presented in Ingolstadt (Germany), in July 2009. Schulkowsky’s incredible virtuosity was captured on more than 20 recordings, including CDs featuring violist Kim Kashkashian, trumpet players Reinhold Friedrich, and Nils Petter Molvaer as well as seminal recordings of Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff compositions. She is also a composer and performed improvisations and original compositions twice daily on a “sound sculpture”, located in New York’s Grand Central Station, for two weeks in 2005. Her opera The Child of the Sea Otter, which she wrote in 2008, was first performed in Oldenburg (Germany), and then repeated in Mannheim as well as Berlin. Robyn Schulkowsky, the Gothenburg Symphony, and other renowned solo percussionists Anders Loguin Mika Takehara, Eirik Raude, and Anders Haag performed the critically acclaimed premiere of “Glorious percussion” by Sofia Gubaidulina last season under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel, a young and acclaimed conductor. Since then, the new ensemble has been named after the piece and has appeared with many important orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic. Robyn Schulkowsky continues her frenetic global pace with a month-long South American tour with trumpet player Reinhold Friedrich, which includes concerts and workshops as well as a US tour for an Armenian project featuring violist Kim Kashkashian. from http://www.drummerworld.com
