BIOGRAPHY
Justin Preece is a percussionist, composer, and educator currently residing in Corvallis, Oregon. He performs regularly with the Oregon Coast Music Festival Orchestra and the Newport Symphony, and has enjoyed recent appearances with the Portland Opera, Hilltop Big Band, Chintimini Chamber Music Festival, and the Sundays@3 Recital Series. He composes for solo and chamber percussion, with premieres of his music occurring at Oregon State University and the Northwest Percussion Festival. Before moving to Oregon, Justin was an active freelance musician in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, held principal positions with Symphony Arlington and the Las Colinas and Garland Symphony Orchestras, and played in numerous musical productions for Theatre Three and Lyric Stage. He appears on the 2008 Dallas Winds recording of the music of Percy Grainger.Justin currently serves as a State Chapter Officer for the Percussive Arts Society. He has presented at the Oregon Music Education Association (OMEA) conference and area percussion festivals, recorded instructional videos of the Oregon All-State high school timpani etudes, and written on the topic of percussion education for The Instrumentalist. In addition to his position at Willamette University, Justin is the Percussion Coordinator for the Oregon State University Marching Band and the OSU Samba Bateria.
Justin holds degrees in Percussion Performance (M.Mus., B.Mus.) and Music Education (B.Mus.) from Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Meadows School of the Arts, with additional study at King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Music (UK). His principal teachers in percussion have included Doug Howard, Kalman Cherry, Kurt-Hans Goedicke, Drew Lang, and Jeff Prosperie. Justin has academic and artistic interests in the role of percussion in the contemporary music landscape, the place of human musical agency in an era of computational representation, and the structure and institutional direction of music education in Oregon.