Robyn Schulkowsky

The percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky, who was born in South Dakota, received her training at the universities of Iowa and New Mexico (Albuquerque). She began her career in 1977 with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in Santa Fe before moving to Cologne in 1980 to study with Christoph Caskel. There she came into close contact with contemporary music, which has been a center of her activities ever since. Schulkowsky collaborated with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, and Morton Feldman, among others, presenting their works on tours in Asia, the United States, and Africa. Her percussion quintet Glorious Percussion premiered Sofia Gubaidulina’s work of the same name. She has appeared at the BBC Proms, Salzburg Festival, Musikfest Berlin, and Holland Festival with her solo programs and with music by John Cage, Helmut Lachenmann, and Olga Neuwirth. Through her projects, Schulkowsky also seeks out encounters with artists from other genres, such as the African drummer Kofi Ghanaba, the painter and object artist Günther Uecker, the actress Edith Clever, and the choreographers Merce Cunningham and Sasha Waltz. In 1998 Schulkowsky founded the RhythmLab, through which she has given countless workshops to teach children, teenagers, and adults the rhythmic intensity of music. In 2005, together with the sound sculptor Lukas Kühne and the drummer Joey Baron, she introduced the Space and Frequency – RhythmLab, a sound sculpture at New York’s Grand Central Station. More than 20 recordings, including those with violist Kim Kashkashian and trumpeters Reinhold Friedrich and Nils Petter Molvaer, document Robyn Schulkowsky’s multifaceted art. Her most recent album, which she released with Joey Baron in 2018, is Now You Can Hear Me.

August 2019