Orion Kim, Contributing Photographer

By the time Chad Beebe MUS ’25, Jessie Chiang MUS ’25 and Matt Boyle MUS ’26 arrived at the Yale School of Music, they were already collaborators and friends.

They first met as students at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Now, they form half of the Yale Percussion Group — a tight-knit ensemble comprising the six students in Professor of Percussion Robert van Sice’s percussion studio.

“There are only six spots for percussion at Yale,” van Sice said. “So I have the luxury of a group size that is so small and focused, allowing me to do a kind of bespoke teaching.”

The word “bespoke” comes up often when students talk about Van Sice’s approach. Rather than an established curriculum, he tailors his teaching to each student’s projects, talents, and musical and technical needs. 

According to his students, this environment makes the learning experience “warm” and “built on trust.”

“It’s just more effective to find a focused way to get the best out of each young person than to pour information over their head and say, ‘Here’s what I teach,’” van Sice said.

Boyle described it as a “custom-tailored” learning experience and said that van Sice allows them to follow what they’re passionate about.

Van Sice, who began his career in Europe, drew inspiration from Europe’s highly developed chamber music culture. When he joined the Yale faculty in 1997, he brought with him the belief that chamber music should be the centerpiece of a percussionist’s training.

“Chamber music informs everything else,” he said. “An orchestral musician is just a kind of overgrown chamber musician… even a soloist is a sophisticated chamber musician who knows how to listen across the room.”

In Yale’s percussion studio, students learn and experience everything — from performances with the Philharmonia to solo repertoire to individual chamber endeavors — and often a combination of all in a single week.

Beebe described it as “trying to shove five pounds of stuff into a three-pound bag.” Still, he and his colleagues try to carve out around four additional hours daily for practice.

Unlike some instrumentalists — like violinists or pianists — percussionists don’t have centuries of repertoire behind them. While there are arrangements of pieces by Bach or Chopin arranged for percussion, many of the instruments’ core works were composed only in the past 40 to 50 years.

Several pieces were composed for van Sice, including commissioned pieces by leading composers Peter Klatzow, Alejandro Viñao and Martin Bresnick.

These works can be written for endless combinations of instruments — from marimbas and vibraphones to gongs and cowbells. Much of the joy of percussion comes from this experimentation, said Beebe.

However, there’s still a long way to go to expand the musical universe of percussion instruments. Judy Hu MUS ’26 noted that even for the marimba, the percussion’s most popular instrument, there are only about a dozen works considered “standard,” or commonly played, repertoire.

Chiang shared that lyrical, tonal percussion works are relatively rare, making new compositions especially valuable. She and other group members frequently collaborate with student composers at YSM to help expand the repertoire available to performers.

What results is a studio that doesn’t just learn how to perform percussion music, but helps shape it.

“The pace of growth is extraordinary,” van Sice said. “I can’t even imagine where the future of percussion is going. Every composer in the world is writing percussion music — and good percussion music.”

This wasn’t always the case. When van Sice began performing in the early 80s, the percussion world was just being born. Marimbas were unfamiliar to most concert presenters, and percussionists were often left out of the mainstream performance scene.

Today, much of percussion’s visibility is thanks to ensembles born out of YPG — including Sandbox Percussion, a recent Grammy nominee, and Sō Percussion, which won a Grammy this year.

When the award was announced, van Sice sent them a note acknowledging how proud he was of them, likening his letter to one that “someone’s grandfather would write.” 

Now, nearly three decades into his tenure at Yale, he’s writing down some of the most prominent memories from his career, currently contributing a chapter to “Marimba Masters,” a book set to come out this summer.

The opportunity has provided him with an unlikely source of reflection. While he has commissioned major works and performed at prestigious venues worldwide, “nothing beats teaching.”

Van Sice described his current students as having “so much talent and potential.” He is confident that they will thrive in any path they choose, whether in teaching, chamber music, or orchestral performance.

Van Sice founded the Yale Percussion Group in 1997.