Steve Fitch
Featured
on New Music Arizona
Concert, June
20, 2010, 3:00 PM
Steve Fitch has been
the solo drum set player for The Phoenix Symphony for
the past twenty-six years, as well as a percussionist
and the assistant principal timpanist with this
orchestra. In 2009 he was offered the position of
principal percussionist with the Arizona Musicfest
Festival Orchestra, working alongside principal
timpanist John Tafoya, formerly of the National
Symphony Orchestra (prof. of perc/timp IU
Bloomington).
He has soloed on numerous Phoenix Symphony POPS programs
and in March 2009, he performed Harold Farberman’s Concerto
for Jazz Drummer and Symphony Orchestra with The Phoenix
Symphony.
Besides working with TPS, Steve also plays in A.J. Thau’s
Jazz 4tet and Barry Black’s VALLEY BIG BAND, and is a
regular guest with Clark Krueger’s Extreme Decibel Big
Band.
Back in the day, Fitch marched in two different drum corps,
performed in Drum Corps International Championship Finals
in Philadelphia and attained sixth place in the DCI snare
drum individual competition.
Since 1993 he has played and recorded as a founding member
of the Kalamazoo Percussion Trio in Germany where the
German press hailed Steve as a “drum wonder”, “master
drummer”, and “extraterrestrial” after performances of his
piece “F/X” for solo snare drum. His improvised snare drum
solos at The Phoenix Symphony’s ‘Symphony for the Schools’,
POPS, and Musicfest programs, entitled “I Drum, Therefore I
Am”, have entertained and delighted tens of thousands of
people.
Fitch has been a guest with many German orchestras,
including the operas of Hannover and Bremen and the
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. As a regular guest with
the “Radio Philharmonie Hannover des NDR, and the Hannover
Pops Orchestra, he has performed, and or toured with such
stars as Ray Charles, Al Jarreau, Bobby McFerrin, Randy
Crawford, and Patricia Kaas. In Phoenix, he has drummed for
Marvin Hamlisch, Bill Conti, Steve Lippia, Jack Everly,
Michael Krajewsky, Tom Scott, the Canadian Brass and many
others.
He taught on the faculty of the “Festival junger Kuenstler”
in Bayreuth, Germany for seven years, working with talented
college aged percussionists from all over the world and
teaching his workshop on Ultimate Stick
Control---“Intuitive Touch”. Several of his percussion
compositions received their world premieres there. Fitch’s
numerous marimba, percussion, timpani, and percussion
ensemble compositions have been published by C. Alan
Publications in North Carolina and Musikverlag Zimmermann
in Frankfurt.
Steve has taught privately for 38 years (since the 7th
grade) and some of his former students include Marcus
Rhoten (principal timpanist of the New York Philharmonic),
Patsy Dash (percussionist of the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra), Duncan Patton (timpanist with the Metropolitan
Opera).
He has written the book Fantastic Feet---Stepping Outside
the Box for drum set (published by Mel Bay---2010 release)
and is currently writing book two in this series.
Steve has studied Basler drumming with Swiss master drummer
Alfons Grieder in Basel, Switzerland, and he earned his
bachelor and masters of music performance degrees from the
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the Eastman School of
Music, where he studied with Michael Rosen and John Beck,
respectively.
He has been a Zildjian artist since 1995 and a Vic Firth
and Remo artist since 2009.