Performer Biographies

Samuel Budish, a percussionist from New Jersey, is a graduate student at The Juilliard School, where he also received his undergraduate degree.

He performs with virtually every ensemble at Juilliard, and as a soloist with some of today's most sought-after conductors. Mr. Budish is an avid supporter of new music and has premiered works by David Fulmer, Joseph Pereira, Hiroya Miura, and Tan Dun, to name just a few.

His musical interests run far beyond the walls of Juilliard; he studies frame drums with Glen Velez and has performed with such artists as Balto, Andrew Sheron, the Sultans of Swat, Michael T and the Eclectic, and Paul Winter.

Ian Sullivan was a 2011 Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, performing last summer with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and in the Tanglewood Ensembles. He is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where he studied percussion with Michael Udow, Brian Jones, Joseph Gramley, and Ian Ding.

Mr. Sullivan has performed with the Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma, So Percussion, Sharon Isbin, AXIOM ensemble, Salomé Chamber Orchestra, Juilliard Orchestra, and Mark Morris Dance Group at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall, and Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. In the summer of 2010 Mr. Sullivan was a Fellow at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan. He has been a recipient of the Fred Hoey Memorial Scholarship and Avedis Zildjian Percussion Scholarship, has won the Interlochen Arts Academy Concerto Competition, and was concerto soloist with the Ocean City (New Jersey) Pops Orchestra in 2008. For three summers he participated in the Aspen Music Festival, where he was the Charles Owen Memorial Fellowship winner in 2009.

Mr. Sullivan is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Now a resident of Linwood, New Jersey, he is a second-year student in the Master of Music degree program at The Juilliard School, where he studies with Markus Rhoten.

Mike Truesdell’s endeavors as a solo and chamber musician have brought him accolades in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The New York Times said of his performance of Tan Dun’s Silk Road, “Michael Truesdell . . . played with sensitivity and dexterity.” In 2010 he was awarded second prize, out of ninety-five entrants, at the TROMP International Percussion Competition in Eindhoven, Netherlands. In January 2008, he performed on tour with the Lucerne Festival Academy chamber ensemble led by the legendary Pierre Boulez and coached by members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

Mr. Truesdell performs non-Western styles of music and feels as comfortable performing the traditional music of Africa, Brazil, and Cuba as he does the European classics. He is a cofounder of Spectrum Trio, a percussion trio dedicated to creating new works for percussion by fusing the music of the African diaspora with pop and concert music of the West. Spectrum Trio released its first album, Spectrum Trio, to critical acclaim in May 2009. Mr. Truesdell also has an avid interest in teaching. In 2009 he created the Wildcat Percussion Camp, an annual, weeklong percussion workshop for students entering seventh through twelfth grades. In 2011 he was co-creator, assistant director, and member of the faculty for the nief-norf Summer Festival at Furman University in South Carolina.

Mr. Truesdell is a resident of New York City, where he is a candidate for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in percussion at The Juilliard School.