ABOUT
A “tour de force” performer (Seen and Heard International), percussionist Joseph Bricker is the Associate Principal Timpani/Percussion of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras, appointed by Louis Langrée in 2021. Prior to joining the CSO, Bricker was the percussion fellow with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago from 2019-2022. In addition to the Cincinnati and Civic orchestras, he has performed with the orchestras of Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. (National), Dallas, and Houston, the Metropolitan Opera and several others. In the summers, he has held fellowships with the Verbier, Tanglewood, Pacific (Japan), and Aspen Music Festivals. He received his Master of Music from DePaul University, studying with Cynthia Yeh, and his Bachelor of Music from the Juilliard School, studying with Greg Zuber. He has also studied with Patricia Dash.
Joe maintains a deep commitment to community engagement and experimenting with educational models within music. In 2020, he co-founded the From Scratch project, a program for students of the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra, and the Nouveau Strings program, in which students receive unique instruction in creative musical thinking through the lens of contemporary composition and performance. In 2017, as a Morse Teaching Artist Fellow, he co-created a new band program for New York Public School #191. From 2020-2022, he worked with Notes for Peace, a Chicago-based project that works with families who have lost children to gun violence to create new songs in their memory. In Cincinnati, Joe has led workshops on incorporating contemporary music into general education and designed interactive performances for all ages across multiple curricular topics. In addition to these projects, Bricker has been engaged as an educator/music education consultant by the Interlochen Center for the Arts, Chicago Public Schools, the Aspen Music Festival, the Illinois Music Educators Association, the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, and several others. Joe serves on the percussion faculty at Northern Kentucky University.
A fierce advocate for new and contemporary music, Bricker has worked with composers such as Steve Reich, Tyshawn Sorey, Elizabeth A. Baker, Kevin Day, Silvia Borzelli, Vivian Fung, Thomas Ades, Fredrick Gifford, and numerous others on several premieres and recordings. He is an Artistic Director for Cincinnati’s concert:nova, an organization which seeks to push the boundaries of the music performance experience. He has performed as a guest artist on the North Shore Chamber Music Festival, the Literary Music Series, the Live Music Project, Juilliard’s FOCUS! Festival, appeared with the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, and has curated concerts for fellows of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, in addition to other projects. While in his graduate studies, he taught a course on non-standard percussion notation and interpretation at DePaul University, culminating in a digital version of Dai Fujikura’s work Longing from Afar. Joe can also be heard as composer/performer on a 2017 advertisement for TaylorMade-Adidas featuring Tiger Woods. He has been the recipient of awards from the Zildjian Company, the Aspen Music Festival, National Public Radio, and the Skokie Valley Symphony. Joe proudly plays with Dragonfly Percussion sticks and mallets.