Josh Quillen

Josh Quillen has forged a unique identity in the contemporary music world as an all-around percussionist, an expert steel-drum performer (lauded as “softly sophisticated” by the New York Times), and a composer. A member of the acclaimed ensemble Sō Percussion since 2006, Josh has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Lincoln Center Festival, Stanford Lively Arts, and dozens of other venues in the United States. In that time, Sō Percussion has toured Russia, Spain, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Scotland. These parallel interests led Josh to break ground in the use of the steel drums in contemporary classical music. To date, he has commissioned over a dozen pieces for steel drums from composers such as Stuart Saunders Smith, Roger Zahab, Dan Trueman, and Paul Lansky. He’s also had the honor to drill the Brooklyn Steel Orchestra (New York) and Skiffle Bunch Steel Orchestra (Trinidad) for the Panorama competition during carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. In recent years, he has collaborated with and performed in two works by writer/director Ain Gordon, Relics and Their Humans and Radicals in Miniature. An avid educator, Josh is a performer-in-residence at Princeton University with Sō Percussion and co-director of the Sō Percussion Summer Institute. He is in his 18th year as the director of the New York University Steel Band.