Robert Chappell, distinguished teaching professor emeritus in the School of Music, is being honored by the Percussive ArtsSociety with their Lifetime Achievement in Education Award at their national convention in Indianapolis November 11-14.
Chappell’s career has encompassed an inclusive range of musical styles and genres in performance, education and composition. After receiving degrees in percussion performance from the Ohio State University and the University of North Texas, Chappell’s interest in world percussion resulted in continued study of Ugandan amadinda xylophone, African drumming, and East Indian tabla (Ustad Zakir Hussain and Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri). He received an Indo-American Research Fellowship for study with renowned tabla master, Ustad Alla Rakha, in Mumbai, India.
Robert has performed with Columbus, Ft. Worth, Dallas and Indianapolis Symphonies, and recorded and toured internationally with both the Paul Winter Consort and Rhythmic Union. Chappell has performed from 1992–2013 with steelpan virtuoso Liam Teague in the Liam Teague and Robert Chappell duo and their world-jazz group, Panoramic. Notable performances include the St. Lucia Jazz Festival, the National Concert Hall of Taiwan, the Seoul Drum Festival, the Chicago World Music Festival, the Trinidad and Tobago Jazz Festival, and performances at Percussive Arts Society International Conventions.
Active as an educator for 48 years, Chappell has taught at Indiana State University and NIU. He was the program director of the Percussion/Steelpan/World Music session at the Birch Creek Music Center from 1989 to 2013. From 2013 to 2020, Robert was a visiting professor at the Instituto Nacional de Música, (National Institute of Music), in San José, Costa Rica, where he started the first steel band in Latin America.
A composer in contemporary, jazz, and cross-cultural idioms, Robert’s compositions have been published by Marimba Productions, Panyard Publications, Pan Press, and Drop6 Media. His steelband composition, “Wood-N-Steel,” for Ugandan xylophone and Steelband, was premiered by the NIU Steelband at the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, and an orchestrated version has been performed with the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Rockford Symphony Orchestra and the Buffalo Philharmonic, and a wind ensemble version performed at the Instituto Nacional de Música in San José, Costa Rica. “Wood-N-Steel” was the top scoring composition in two rounds of the World Steelband Festival held in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 2000 and helped NIU place second in a competitio featuring 19 International and Trinidadian steel bands.
