Dr. Brady Spitz is a percussionist, timpanist, and educator based in Martin, Tennessee where he is Assistant Professor and Director of Percussion at the University of Tennessee at Martin. He has extensive performance experience with classical, contemporary, and world percussion in a diverse group of musical environments. He has performed with the Houston Symphony, Hawaii Symphony, and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestras among many others. Dr. Spitz maintains an active freelance percussion schedule and has appeared on stage alongside artists such as Idina Menzel, Weird Al Yankovic, and The Who. As a chamber musician, he has worked with a diverse group of artists, including Claire Chase and Mario Davidovsky. His duo Sonic Boom is working to create a repertoire for organ and percussion where very little has existed before, yielding upcoming international engagements.
He has given performances and clinics across the United States, as well as performing at the Percussive Arts Society’s International Conventions in 2005, 2008, and as a featured soloist with Hamiruge’s 2009 appearance. He was the director for the Houston Baptist University Gamelan Ensemble’s appearance at PASIC in 2019 and is formerly artist-in-residence at the Indonesian Consulate in Houston. He maintains an active research interest in Lou Harrison’s American Gamelan repertoire and the American Gamelan movement.
Previously, he was the front ensemble director and co-designer for the nationally-recognized Northshore High School Indoor Percussion Program, a group that won four consecutive Texas State Championships, multiple WGI Regional Championships, and was a World Class Finalist at the 2014 WGI World Championships. In his decade of private studio teaching, his students placed highly in all of the state-wide solo competitions, received consistent Superior Division UIL ratings in both solo and ensemble playing, and auditioned into some of the top colleges and conservatories in the nation.
Dr. Spitz holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Rice University, where he was awarded the Benjamin Armistead Shepherd Teaching Fellowship. He also holds a Bachelor of Music Performance in Percussion, magna cum laude, from the University of North Texas College of Music and a Master of Music in Percussion Performance from Louisiana State University. His teachers include Matthew Strauss, Richard Brown, Mark Ford, Christopher Deane, Brett William Dietz, Ed Soph, Paul Rennick, Jim Atwood, Jose Aponte, Poovalur Sriji, and Ed Smith.
Mr. Spitz is an endorser of Innovative Percussion and Black Swamp Percussion.