Bill Sallak's career encompasses a diverse mix of performance, technology, pedagogy, and research. Currently a percussionist with the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble and the Phoenix-based experimental group Crossing 32nd Street, he has also performed with the Music on the Edge Chamber Orchestra (Pittsburgh, PA), the ambient/noise collective barely.audible, New Music Group/Daedalus, Summit New Music Ensemble, PRISM Players, the Phoenix, Akron, and Ohio Valley Symphonies, Ohio Ballet, Nadeen O'Connor Dance Theater, Verlezza Dance, Kent Dance Ensemble, and the dance departments at Arizona State University, Ohio University, Slippery Rock University, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, and SUNY-Fredonia. Appearances at conferences and festivals include the Phoenix Experimental Arts Festival, Tempe/Phoenix SoundRave, the American New Arts Festival, Percussive Arts Society International Conferences in 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006, and a three-week tour of South Korea as part of Je-Chun Park's Drum on Drum Project in the spring of 2005. As a performer, conductor, coach, and composer, he has given world and regional premiere performances of over thirty works.
Bill has taught at SUNY-Fredonia, the University of Akron, Kent State University, Ohio University, Arizona State University, and is currently an adjunct instructor at Glendale and Paradise Valley Community Colleges in Phoenix. He has taught college courses in percussion, contemporary music, music history and literature, jazz and rock history, audio engineering, electronic music, acoustics, and world music. A long-time student of Ghanaian master drummer and xylophonist Bernard Woma, Bill founded the African Drumming Ensemble at the University of Akron and directed it for five years. He holds degrees from SUNY-Fredonia and the University of Akron, and is currently pursuing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Arizona State University.
As an audio engineer, Bill has worked as an engineer for KBAQ-FM in Phoenix and the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. His audio engineering work includes James Galway, Lynn Harrell, Joshua Bell, William Preucil, the Pacifica String Quartet, conductors Gerard Schwarz, Jung Ho Pak, David Lockington, and Timothy Russell, and live sound work with Trinity Irish Dance, KODO, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Dave Brubeck, Paul Winter, Sharon Isbin, and Jewel. His audio restoration of the original music for May O'Donnell's "Dance Energies" was heard at the ACDFA Regional Conference in Detroit as well as Ms. O'Donnell's memorial concert at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan.
About the tracks here:
Unsafe (At Any Speed) was written by Roshanne Etezady in 2001. I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Roshanne in the fall of 2006 in the ASU Chamber Winds, performing her work Damaged Goods (another fine piece). This recording is from a recital I gave in Katzin Concert Hall at ASU in February 2007. Patrick Fanning is the skilled and intrepid pianist.
Spiked (omaggio:berio:joyce) was composed by Glenn Hackbarth for percussionist Doug Nottingham. I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Hackbarth through several revisions of the piece as it oscillated between fully dictated notation and improvisation-with-suggestions. The piece is for one percussionist and a laptop running MAX/MSP. Dr. Hackbarth derived all of the accompanying electronic sounds from samples of recorded speech. I can't figure it out either, but it's cool.
I like playing Bach at the marimba a lot. I've included the Allemande from the Cello Suite in D major.
Melt is the second of four movements (the Icarus Suite) I composed for choreographer Chung-Fu Chang's work L'Ioun. The Icarus Suite was so named because the commission for the movement and sound works came from the Dancing Wheels Icarus Project in Cleveland, which assembled six choreographers to create pieces that updated the classic Icarus myth. This music accompanied the portion of the dance where that first moment of melting wax is stretched to encompass several minutes. L'Ioun received its premiere at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, OH, in May of 2003.
