Baker Artist Portfolios

Known for performing “with precision and an impressive attention to timbral detail” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), percussionist Jeff Stern has developed a voice to listen for in today’s contemporary music scene. He has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and has collaborated with and championed the work of a number of the world’s preeminent composers. Notable premieres include Alejandro Viñao’s Stress and Flow with The Percussion Collective, James Wood’s Secret Dialogues for solo marimba, and John Luther Adams’ Sila at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival. As a proponent for the music of our time, Stern also actively commissions works by composers of his generation, such as Michael Laurello, Thomas Kotcheff, Emma O’Halloran, Robert Honstein, and Juri Seo.

Stern is the executive director, co-artistic director, and founding percussionist of 2 piano/2 percussion group icarus Quartet. Winner of the 2019 Chamber Music Yellow Springs Competition, icarus is quickly gaining the attention of composers, presenters, and audiences everywhere. They have been artists in residence for programs including Chamber Music Northwest’s Protégé Project, the Vienna Summer Music Festival, Bowling Green State University’s Klinger ElectroAcoustic Residency, and the DMV Music Academy held at the Kennedy Center’s REACH. The Quartet’s debut commercial album, BIG THINGS, featuring the music of Michael Laurello, Brad Lubman, and Paul Lansky was released on Furious Artisans records in June 2022, receiving praise from the Wall Street Journal as “a beautifully immersive recording…an impressive calling card.” In the 2024-25 season, icarus made their debut on the Secrest Artist Series in Winston-Salem, NC to premiere three companion works to Bartók’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion written expressly for iQ by Martin Bresnick, Viet Cuong, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon. Their appearance was lauded by the Cultural Voice of North Carolina as a “performance about as perfect as one could ask for: superior musicality with nuance, and a commitment to music-making as expressive as possible.”

With The Percussion Collective, Stern has toured the United States, performed on a live broadcast for WXQR’s Midday Masterpieces, and given a featured evening performance at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. He joined the Collective for Chris Theofanidis’ Drum Circles concerto for four percussionists with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of JoAnn Falletta in March 2022, with The Florida Orchestra in September 2023 led by resident music director Michael Francis, and again with the Phoenix Symphony in October 2024 with Colombian-American conductor Lina Gonzalez-Granados. In February 2025, Stern and the Collective returned to The Florida Orchestra as soloists for the concerto version of Emmy Award-winning composer Garth Neustadter’s Seaborne with video by Kjell van Sice. With his various Collective colleagues, representing some of the brightest stars in modern percussion, Stern has given two world premieres by Neustadter, two world premieres by Alejandro Viñao, and premieres of works for solo violin and percussion quartet by Ke-Chia Chen and Kenji Bunch at the Kennedy Center with virtuoso violinist Paul Huang.

Stern is a frequent guest collaborator with new music ensembles around the country including NOVUS NY, Sandbox Percussion, the American Modern Opera Company, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, and ensemble mise-en, with whom he toured Hong Kong in 2018. He has appeared at the Yellow Barn Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Annapolis Chamber Music Festival, Lake George Music Festival, and the Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab, and can be heard on the Albany, Elm City, Bright Shiny Things, figureight, Furious Artisans, and Cantaloupe record labels. Other recent collaborations have run the gamut of style and medium – from opera workshops with conductor/composer Matthew Aucoin and MacArthur Genius director Peter Sellars to arena orchestrations with Icelandic cosmic rock band Sigur Rós to adapting bass lines and harp melodies for marimba alongside Columbian-Canadian singer-songwriter Lido Pimienta on her 2025 NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

Stern has served on the percussion faculty at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University since 2017, and has taught at the Luzerne Music Center since 2022. He holds a B.M. from UMass Amherst, an M.M. from the Peabody Conservatory, where he was awarded the Harold Randolph Prize in Performance, and an Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music. Stern is a proud artist endorser of Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Zildjian cymbals, Evans drumheads, and Pearl/Adams drums and percussion. Learn more at www.sternpercussion.com.