Strike
Piano/Percussion
"serious and significant music performed with exceptional skill and musicality and no little wit. A disc worth taking a chance on if only to have a piece in your collection called Mechanically Separated Chicken Parts..." - MusicWeb International
Strike, the duo comprised of pianist Jeffery Meyer (USA) and percussionist Paul Vaillancourt (Canada) has won accolades for its an adventurous and eclectic programming and performances. Jeffery Meyer is the Artistic Director of the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic (Russia) as well as the Director of Orchestras at ASU School of Music (Arizona), and Paul Vaillancourt heads the percussion department at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. The two musicians met while doing graduate work at the State University of New York Stony Brook, studying under Gilbert Kalish and Raymond DesRoches, respectively. They have both been in residence at the Banff Centre in Canada and the Aspen Music Festival as part of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and have performed together throughout the United States, Russia and Southeast Asia.
The duo has appeared in the International Contemporary Music Festival “Sound Ways” (St. Petersburg, Russia), Beijing Modern Festival (China), Tianjin Conservatory (China) and the Thailand International Composition Festival (Thailand). In January 2010, they released an album of world-premiere recordings of works written for the duo on Luminescence Records, Chicago. Most recently the ensemble was in residence at the UMKC Conservatory and was presented at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburg as part of the Sound Series/Music on the Edge 2013-14 season.
Paul and Jeff have been performing together since 1997 and have bonded over chicken wings and food poisoning in both DeKalb, Illinois and Bangkok, Thailand.