Rob Power
Percussion, Scruncheons
B.Mus. Memorial
M.Mus. McGill
Rob Power is an active chamber musician, soloist, improviser, orchestral player, composer, teacher, and instrument builder. He has performed with the new music ensembles Continuum, Timeworks, and Attacca, the Celtic group Picket Line, the improv quintet JERK, and over twenty Canadian orchestras. Along with performances in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States, he has appeared at festivals across Canada from Whitehorse to St. John’s. Rob has collaborated closely with many world renowned musicians, including Rivka Golani, Trichy Sankaran, Mika Yoshida, Beverley Johnston, Mark Fewer, Sal Fererras and John Wyre, and is a regular participant in Newfoundland’s Sound Symposium.
As a soloist, he has performed percussion concerti by Alan Bell, Clark Ross, Alison Cameron, and Gregory Hawco. As a chamber musician he has appeared in world premieres by some of Canada’s best known composers, including R. Murray Schafer, James Harley, Christos Hatzis, Stephen Hatfield, Clifford Crawley, Clark Ross, Bill Brennan, and John Wyre.
An active composer, Rob’s compositions reflect a multitude of influences, and include both contemporary classical works and outdoor environmental pieces. Rob was awarded the OZ-FM award for excellence and imagination in sound at the 2002 Provincial Drama Festival in St. John's, for composing the soundtrack for the Beothuck Street Players' production of Drink the Mercury. In 2006 he was invited to Patras, Greece to compose a Harbour Symphony for the European City of Culture celebrations, and that same year his percussion trio Untouchable was the first prize winner in the Millennium Arts Society Composition Competition. His most recent work, Woody Island, was premiered by the River Connected percussion duo at the 2010 Sound Symposium.
Rob holds a Bachelor's degree in performance from the MUN School of Music, where he studied with Don Wherry, and a Masters degree from McGill University, where his teachers were Pierre Beluse and D'Arcy Phillip Gray. He has also studied with Alexander Lepak of the Hartford Symphony, and with Charles Fullbrook at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England.
Currently, Rob is an Associate Professor of percussion at the MUN School of Music, where he maintains a large and vibrant studio of talented percussionists, and directs the renowned Scruncheons Percussion Ensemble. He is on the Artistic Committee of the Sound Symposium, and performs regularly in a wide variety of musical collaborations, including the St. John’s rock band The Bash Brothers and the improvisational groups Spanner and McKudo. Rob is also a member of Newfoundland’s premiere African drum and dance ensemble Dzolali, and is the principal percussionist with the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra. An avid builder of new and unusual percussion instruments, Rob’s recent constructions include the po-pipes, glass triangle, PVC talking drum, and the quarter-tone mirrorphone.
In 2009 Rob was awarded the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council's Arts in Education Award.
