Percussion Faculty
Dr. John Lane
jwl002@shsu.edu
(936) 294-3593
School of Music 224
http://www.johnlane1.com
John Lane is an artist whose creative work and collaborations extend through percussion to poetry/spoken word and theater. As a performer, he has appeared on stages throughout the Americas, Australia, and Japan. Recent credits include solo and chamber music performances at the Rothko Chapel, Hokuto International Music Festival in Japan, Percusión en Escena International Percussion Festival in Bogotâ, Colombia, as concerto soloist with the National Symphony of Panama, and as a featured international guest artist at the Antarctica Music Festival at the Australian National University. He has released two albums: The Landscape Scrolls (Starkland Records), and Trigger: Artists Respond to Gun Violence (Albany Records).
Along with Allen Otte (Percussion Group Cincinnati), he created an ongoing social justice advocacy project, The Innocents which has toured throughout the US including performances and workshops at the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, the Innocence Network Conference, numerous university and public school campuses, and is now the subject of an award winning feature length documentary by Wojciech Lorenc. Lungta, his trumpet/percussion duo with trumpeter Amanda Pepping, is dedicated to creating original works and a personal repertoire based largely on collaborations with artists of various disciplines.
Commissioning new works and interdisciplinary collaborations, often taking on socio-political issues, are integral to John's work. He has been connected with a number of composers including Peter Garland, Mark Applebaum, Yo Goto, Monica Pearce, Mark Satterwhite, Amanda Schoofs, Danny Clay, Graeme Leak, Emiliano Pardo, Mara Helmuth, Christopher Deane, John Luther Adams, Kyle Gann, Michael Byron, Wen Hui Xie, Kazuaki Shiota and David Farrell. John has collaborated extensively with poet Nick Lantz, the writers Ann McCutchan and Todd Boss, visual artists Edward Morin and Pat Alexander, and has created original music for choreographer/dancer Hilary Bryan and granite sculptor Jesús Moroles.
John has been active in the Percussive Arts Society, serving on the Composition Committee, the New Music/Research Committee and as a reviewer for Percussive Notes. John has performed a number of times at the the Percussive Arts Society International Convention and co-hosted the New Music Research Focus Day in 2014: Images of Sound: Innovations in Notation.
John is the creator and host of a podcast, Standing in the Stream: Conversations with Creatives. Through long-form conversations and audio collaborations, the podcast explores the lives and works of artists in a variety of fields from visual art, music, filmmaking, dance, writing/poetry, to everything in between. It is a podcast for and about artists seeking to live and sustain creative lives.
Currently, John is the Director of Percussion Studies and Professor of Percussion at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. He taught previously at the University of Wyoming and held fellowships at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the University of North Texas.
He received a Doctor of Musical Arts in Percussion Performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, a Master of Music in Percussion Performance from the University of North Texas, and a Bachelor of Music from Stephen F. Austin State University.
John is a Yamaha Performing Artist and is an Artist with Innovative Percussion, Evans Drumheads, and Zildjian Cymbals.
Dr. Boyce Jeffries
Adjunct Professor, Percussion
bwj009@shsu.edu
(936) 294-1368
School of Music 214
https://boycejeffriespercussion.com
Boyce Jeffries, Jr. is in his second year of serving as a faculty member with the Sam Houston State School of Music. He teaches applied percussion lessons, the percussion methods course for music education majors, music theory, and musicianship / ear training. He is the director of the University Percussion Ensemble, the Second Steel Band, and the Bearkat Drumline.
A native of the West Coast, Boyce completed his first three degrees (B.M., B.M.E., M.M) at California State University–Sacramento under the guidance of percussionists Daniel Kennedy and Christopher Froh and later attended the University of Toronto where he studied with Aiyun Huang and Beverley Johnston. His DMA dissertation examined the “YouTube effect” on the percussion field, primarily pertaining to performance, interpretation, perception, and education. Rather than seeking to reconcile the concerns with and benefits of viewing YouTube videos of percussion performance, he would like to encourage everyone to contextualize these digital experiences and see how they may, or may not, pertain to one’s own practice as a musician.
As a performer and composer, Mr. Jeffries strives to be a “percussive chameleon” that thrives on eclecticism. In addition to his graduate studies in Canada, Boyce served as a percussionist with the Toronto Tabla Ensemble from 2017–2020 under the direction of Ritesh Das. By studying and further understanding the syllabic language of tabla performance, Boyce transcribed the group’s compositions and arranged them to be performed on concert percussion instruments (e.g., vibraphone, marimba, drum set). He can be heard on select tracks from the group’s 7th album, Unexpected Guests, and is excited to continue working with Ritesh and the ensemble.
His debut album, Near & Dear, was released in February of 2022 and contains a collection of original compositions and works in his performance repertoire that have a heightened level of sentimental value to him, personally.