Steve Reich

Nick Terry is a Los Angeles-based, Grammy Award-winning percussionist, collaborative artist, and associate professor of music. His multi-faceted creative output has received critical acclaim from the Recording Academy (55th, 57th, and 62nd Grammy Awards), Percussive Arts Society (invited performer 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2023 International Conventions), iTunes (2014 Best of Classical Music), and National Public Radio (2017’s Top 10 Classical Albums).  His music has been called “mesmerizing, atmospheric, and supremely melodic” by the New York Times, and “representing the next generation in the evolution of modern percussion” by conductor Pierre Boulez.

Nick is a multi-year alumnus of the Lucerne Festival Academy (Switzerland), where he apprenticed alongside members of Ensemble Intercontemporain, Pierre Boulez, and Fritz Hauser. In Southern California, he performs with Brightwork Newmusic, PARTCH, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, and often with the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s New Music and Percussion Groups. Terry received degrees in music performance from the University of Southern California, California Institute of the Arts, and Eastern Illinois University.  He serves as Director of Percussion Studies and Associate Professor of Music at Chapman University’s Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music.  

Since 2020, amidst the lockdown of that year’s pandemic, Terry developed A Near-Empty Space in an effort to better understand the intersection of meditative/contemplative practices, the nature of mind and it’s role in shaping musical intuitions, and his own improvisational/compositional/collaborative process.