STEVEN SCHICK was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. For the past 30 years, he has championed contemporary percussion music as a performer and teacher. He studied at the University of Iowa and received a Soloist's Diploma from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany. Schick has commissioned and premiered more than one hundred new works for percussion, performing these pieces on major concert series such as Lincoln Center's Great Performers and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella concerts, as well as at international festivals including Warsaw Autumn, the BBC Proms, the Jerusalem Festival, the Holland Festival, the Stockholm International Percussion Event, and the Budapest Spring Festival. He has recorded many of those works for Sony Classical, Wergo, Point, CRI, Neuma, and Cantaloupe Records.

Schick has been a regular guest lecturer at the Rotterdam Conservatory and the Royal College of Music in London. He is Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego and a Consulting Artist in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. Schick was the percussionist for the Bang on a Can All-Stars of New York City from 1992-2002. From 2000 to 2004, he served as Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève Switzerland and is the founder and artistic director of the percussion group red fish blue fish. In 2007, Schick assumed the post of Music Director and conductor of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.

In 2006, Schick released three important publications. His book on solo percussion music, The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams, was published in May by the University of Rochester Press, his recording of The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies by John Luther Adams was released by Cantaloupe Music, and a DVD in collaboration with red fish blue fish of the complete percussion works of Iannis Xenakis was released by Mode Records.

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