Dr. Andrew Bliss Assistant Professor Athletic Bands, Music Appreciation Office: Clement 454 Phone: (731) 881-7414 Email: abliss1@utm.edu Web: www.andybliss.net

Active as a performer, scholar, and pedagogue, Dr. Andrew M. Bliss is currently a Lecturer of Music at the University of Tennessee at Martin. Prior to this appointment, Bliss served as the Adjunct Percussion Professor at Centre College, where he taught since 2005.

As a performing artist, Andrew has extensive experience in a wide variety of musical ensembles and genres, while specializing in contemporary solo and chamber performance. He is the artistic director of the nief-norf project, a chamber percussion collective that champions both celebrated and unknown repertoire from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The ensemble has performed at a variety of festivals and universities including a lecture-recital surrounding David Lang’s so-called laws of nature at the 2009 Percussive Arts Society International Convention, a recent presentation of Mark Applebaum’s Straitjacket at the Intermedia Festival (Indianapolis, IN), and an upcoming performance of Christopher Adler’s Pines Long Slept in Sunshine at PASIC 2010.

Andrew was accepted as a fellow in the Roots and Rhizomes festival (Steven Schick, director) at the the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada) in 2009, where he gave the world premiere of John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit and performed Steve Reich’s Drumming to a packed audience. He also recently gave a solo performance of David Lang’s String of Pearls at the College Music Society’s International Conference (Croatia) and gave the world premiere of Kyle Gann’s Olana for solo vibraphone in 2008. Andrew is a member of Nothing in Common, a piano/percussion duo with Chicago-based pianist Mabel Kwan, and as such, has appeared at the SEAMUS National Conference. For almost a decade, Bliss was a founding member of the Base4 Percussion Quartet, performing at various venues across the country and featured on the group’s critically acclaimed album, [one].

Equally interested in scholarship and pedagogy, Andrew has presented at the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy (NCPP), the Society for Music and Minimalism’s 2nd International Conference, and at the Association for Technology in Music Instruction’s (ATMI) National Conference. He regularly appears on the faculty for the Music for All National Percussion Symposium, as a clinician for Yamaha’s Sounds of Summer programs, and has given masterclasses at a variety of universities and high schools in the U.S as well as in Bangkok, Thailand and Stockholm, Sweden. In 2007 & 2008, Bliss served as the Front Ensemble Caption Head for the Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps. He has been published in Percussive Notes and has served as the Vice-President for the Kentucky Chapter of PAS, where he co-hosted four annual state-wide Days of Percussion. As a committed supporter of the Percussive Arts Society, he is currently a member of the PAS Scholarly Research and Music Technology Committees and was a founding member of the PAS Collegiate Committee. He received his Doctorate of Musical Arts and Master’s degrees in percussion performance from the University of Kentucky and a Bachelor’s degree from Northern Illinois University.

Bliss is proud to be a Yamaha Performing Artist and an artist endorser/clinician for Innovative Percussion, Evans Drumheads, and Black Swamp Percussion Instruments and Accessories. Bliss’s primary teachers include James Campbell, Rich Holly, Robert Chappell, Orlando Cotto, and Liam Teague.