Fabio Oliveira

Is a performer with a wide variety of professional experiences as a percussionist, singer, improviser, and conductor, working regularly in solo, chamber, orchestral, and artist accompaniment settings and navigating consistently between traditional Brazilian music, Jazz, and European Classical Music. Transversing these traditions is an important and distinctive feature of his work. He has performed throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia, has worked or collaborated with notable classical composers such as Roger Reynolds, Steve Reich, Philippe Manoury, Helmut Lachenmann, Flo Menezes, Chaya Chernowin, Michael Gordon, and Paulo Guicheney, and has recordings released on Tzadik, New World Records, Mode Records, and Naxos Classical. As a scholar, he's theorized and published about traditional Brazilian Pagode and Samba Music, as well as multiple-percussion performance - dealing with music by Aperghis, Xenakis, and Tutschku, preparing performances with live electronics, text translation in Instrumental Musical Theatre, composer-performer collaboration, and instrument building.

As a performer of Traditional Brazilian Music (voice and percussion), Fabio has been a featured artist in California, New Jersey, and New York. He’s accompanied well know Brazilian artists, including Diogo Nogueira and Lenine. As a percussionist and conductor of the Brazilian Big Band - Banda Pequi, between 2009-2019 Fabio recorded a CD with Leila Pinheiro, a DVD with Nelson Faria and João Bosco, and accompanied Monica Salmaso. He also participated in the recording of the DVD “Mães D’Água” accompanying singers Mart'nália, Luciana Mello, Margareth Menezes, Daúde, Paula Lima, and Alaíde Costa. Fabio Oliveira was also a band member of the samba group Heróis de Botequim for 5 years, traveling and playing shows throughout Brazil and recording in their 2017 DVD.

Since 2019, Dr. Oliveira has been the Director of Percussion Studies at Rowan University (NJ, USA), a position he previously held at the Federal University of Goiás - Brazil, between 2009-2019. A serving member of the Percussive Arts Society New Music/Research Committee since 2019, Fabio hosted the 2023 Focus-day titled “Latin American Percussion Music”, curating five concerts at the 2023 Indianapolis PAS International Convention. Having performed at the PASIC feature opening night concert in 2004, he has been back over the years to perform and present clinics. He has also been a percussion judge and consultant to the Samba Carnival Parades in São Paulo - Brazil, between 2017-2019. Dr. Oliveira holds degrees from the São Paulo State University - Brazil (BM - 2001), the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (MM - 2004), and the University of California at  San Diego (DMA - 2009).

Recent performances have taken him to Indiana University for a week-long residency, to Philadelphia as a soloist with Orchestra 2001, to Portland with Ephrat Asherie Dance Company, to Indianapolis at the 2023 PAS International Convention, and to NYC with the Anat Cohen quartet at the 92Y.