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Faculty
The University of Michigan Percussion Program is comprehensive in its scope and apporoach. We are extremely fortunate to have five renowned faculty avaliable to the students. Students have the option to study with any of the professors and can set up their lessons either full time with one professor or on a two week split system.
Michael Udow
Professor of Percussion
udow@umich.edu
734-764-6520
 Professor Udow has been the principal percussionist with the Santa Fe Opera since 1968. He is a member of the Summit Brass, and tours with the dance/percussion duo Equilibrium. Mr. Udow performs with marimba virtuoso Keiko Abe in diverse chamber music settings in both Japan and the U.S.
As a solo percussionist, he performed the roles of the Drummer/Madman in the American premiere of Hans Werner Henze's We Come to the River for the Santa Fe Opera as well as the gypsy soloist in Sante Fe's production of Countess Maritza. Mr. Udow was soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic in the world premiere of David Felder's Between for solo percussion and orchestra. He has performed as a soloist at Paris's Dragon Center, Amsterdam's Stedliejk Museum, Tokyo's Interlink Festival, Düssledorf's Rhine Music Festival, Salzburg's Aspekte Festival, England's Dartington Dance Festival, and Tübingen's International Percussion Days.
Mr. Udow has received grants from the Michigan Arts Alliance and the Michigan Council for the Arts. As performer and composer Mr. Udow can be heard on the Columbia, Columbia/Denon, Forte Music, Advance, Opus One, CRI, Orion, New World, EQ and Einstein labels. Under his guidance the University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble has performed at Lincoln Center and Merkin Hall; Tokyo's Seimei Hall with Pro Musica Nipponia; the National Concert Hall of Taiwan for the inaugural Taiwan International Percussion Festival; a three-week tour of Japan with Keiko Abe; and the Toyama Japan Festival.
Mr. Udow has taught at the International Festival of Youth Orchestras in Banff, and adjudicated at the International Marimba Competition in Stuttgart.
More About Michael W. Udow
Joseph Gramley
Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Percussion
jgramley@umich.edu
734-764-0152
 Multi-percussionist Joseph Gramley's dynamic and exciting performances as a soloist have garnered critical acclaim and enthusiasm from emerging composers, percussion aficionados and first-time concert-goers alike. He is committed to bringing fresh and inventive compositions to a broad public, and each year he commissions and premieres a number of new works. His first solo recording, American Deconstruction, an expert rendition of five milestone works in multi-percussion's huge new modern repertoire, appeared in 2000 and was reissued in 2006. His second, Global Percussion, was released in 2005.
An invitation from Yo-Yo Ma in 2000 led Gramley to join Mr. Ma's Silk Road Ensemble. In addition to participating in the group's extended residencies in American and European cities, Gramley has toured with Mr. Ma and the Ensemble throughout North America, Europe and Asia, performing in the world's finest concert halls. Along the way, Gramley has studied percussion styles and instruments from around the globe, collaborating with internationally-renowned musicians from India, Iran, China, Japan, Korea and Central Asia. He has also appeared on three top-selling albums with Yo-Yo Ma on the SonyBMG label.
In addition to his solo and Silk Road work, as well as his frequent appearances with chamber groups and orchestras, Gramley performs with the acclaimed British organist Clive Driskill-Smith in the duo Organized Rhythm. The pair's first recording, Beaming Music, will be issued late in 2007.
Joseph Gramley has performed with: the Metropolitan Opera (on stage with Placido Domingo), Pierre-Laurent Aimard (US tour), Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke's, New York City Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (soloist), Seattle Symphony, Orchestre de Lyon, Dawn Upshaw (US tour), David Robertson (Carnegie Hall), Musicians From Marlboro, Spoleto Festival (soloist, chamber music and orchestra), Martha Graham Dance Company, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, New York City Ballet, Eos Orchestra, Renee Fleming (in recital), Glen Velez (US tour), Keiko Abe (PASIC), Aretha Franklin, Elton John (at Radio City Music Hall and on worldwide TV and DVD), George Benjamin, Kayhan Kalhor, Alim Qasimov, Wu Tong, Sandeep Das, Wu Man, and numerous others. Productions on Broadway include: Miss Saigon, Jekyll and Hyde, Phantom of the Opera, Caroline or Change, and The Color Purple. Gramley's compositions have been performed at The Juilliard School, Rhode Island School of Design, The Art Institute of Chicago and Queens College.
Born in 1970, Gramley grew up in Oregon and was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts while a senior at the Interlochen Arts Academy in 1988. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan where he was a student of Michael Udow and Salvatore Rabbio and was a recipient of the Albert A. Stanley Medal. He has also attended the Tanglewood Institute and Salzburg Mozarteum.
Gramley made his concerto debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra after winning their National Soloist Competition, and made his solo debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 1994. He did his graduate studies at the Juilliard School in New York where he studied with Gordon Gottlieb and Daniel Druckman and received both the Goodman and the Khomanoff scholarships. Upon finishing his graduate studies, Gramley performed and recorded with the Ethos Percussion Group throughout the U. S. and Europe.
He is director the Juilliard Summer Percussion Seminar, an intensive program for high-school students held annually at Lincoln Center in New York City and is on the Faculty of Idyllwild Arts Festival In California.
Brian Jones
Adjunct Associate Professor of Percussion
linusbsj@hotmail.com
 Brian Jones joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra as Principal Timpanist in 1998, and has served as Adjunct Associate Professor of Music at the University of Michigan since 2001. Before coming to Detroit, he was a member of the percussion section in the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, where he also was a winner in the orchestra's annual concerto competition.
Mr. Jones has performed with the orchestras of Boston, San Francisco, Houston, Fort Worth, Fort Wayne, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Tanglewood Music Center. He has toured and recorded with the Empire Brass Quintet, collaborated with New Music Detroit, and appeared as a performer on NBC's The Today Show. In 1993-94, Jones served as Visiting Professor in both percussion and jazz studies at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX, and was a member of the Grammy-winning University of North Texas One O'Clock Lab Band on both drumset and bass trombone in 1988-89.
Brian can be heard on syndicated radio with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and has been recorded in a wide variety of musical settings on the Amazing, Argo, BMG, Crystal, Naxos, New Composers, Telarc, and UNT Jazz labels. He has premiered solo works with the Detroit Symphony, the New World Symphony, and The University of Michigan, has given clinics and masterclasses around the world, and was featured in a command performance for Prince Rainier of Monaco.
Jones consistently recognizes his Mondays teaching extremely gifted young musicians at the University of Michigan as his most inspirational days of the week. He sees Michigan musicians as being not only extremely gifted and disciplined, but also possessing a cultural ethic, a level of artistic sophistication, a depth of scholarship, and a general comraderie not to be found anywhere else. Brian hopes only to pass on some of the indispensable wisdom he has received from his orchestral colleagues and from teachers Alan Abel, Cloyd Duff, Gerald Carlyss, Tom Stubbs, Ben Herman, Kalman Cherry, Robert Schietroma, J.B. Smith, Mike Kingan, Ron Fink, and Ed Soph.
Ian Ding
Lecturer of Percussion
ianding@yahoo.com
 Education:
M.M. (Percussion Performance), The Juilliard School, 2001
B.M.(Percussion Performance), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In 2003, at the age of 26, Ian Ding was appointed Assistant Principal Percussionist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra by maestro Neeme Järvi. Prior to joining the DSO, he was a member of the New World Symphony in Miami under Michael Tilson Thomas and the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra in Switzerland under James Levine. With these and other orchestras, he has performed in concert halls throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. In 2005, Mr. Ding began his appointment as Lecturer of Percussion at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
Keenly interested in blending his classical training with experimental music, world music, improvisation, and electronics, Mr. Ding has appeared throughout the metro Detroit area playing everything from solo frame drums to large percussion setups fed through his laptop computer. He is also active in commissioning and performing new works by emerging young composers. Among his many new music & chamber music credits are appearances with the Arnold Schoenberg Choir, Bang On A Can @ MASS MoCA, the Electronic Music Foundation, the Fountain Chamber Music Society of New York, FUNMusic, the New Juilliard Ensemble, and the interdisciplinary performance group Vision Into Art.
Ian Ding was born and raised in Arlington Heights, IL, outside of Chicago. He first studied music with his mother, a private piano teacher, and he played piano and cello before starting drum lessons in the fifth grade. At age 14 he joined the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra as a timpanist & percussionist. He went on to graduate from the University of Illinois and the Juilliard School, studying percussion with William Moersch, Thomas Siwe, Tom Stubbs, and Gregory Zuber. He currently studies hand drumming with Sriram Balasubramanian (South Indian mridangam) and Oussama Naja (doumbek).
Cary Kocher
Lecturer of Percussion
ckocher@umich.edu
 Cary Kocher trained at the University of Michigan under Michael Udow, the late Charles Owen, and Salvatore Rabbio.
Cary has a very diverse performing schedule that includes work with the Ann Arbor Symphony and other area orchestras. He has a weekly gig on vibes with latin jazz group Los Gatos, and plays drums with the Easy Street Jazz Band. He co-leads a classic vibraphone quartet with bassist Paul Keller, provides vibes for Dave Bennett's tribute to Benny Goodman, and plays drums and sings with Espresso.
Cary also enjoys working with developing musicians. As a middle school music teacher in Ann Arbor, he also adjudicates at jazz festivals and clinics, directed the Gold Jazz Ensemble at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp for several years, and teaches jazz vibes and drums at the University of Michigan.
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