Dustin Donahue is a percussionist dedicated to chamber music and contemporary music performance. He has performed with many of the country’s top presenters of chamber music, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Ojai Music Festival, and La Jolla Summerfest. He performs across the United States with groups such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, the Partch Ensemble, and ECHOI. He appears on recordings for Decca, Mode, Naxos, New Focus, Populist, and Stradivarius Records. He also co-directs Wasteland, an organization dedicated to fostering experimental chamber music in southern California.
As a soloist, he has been featured at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Carlsbad Music Festival, the John Cage Centennial Festival in Washington, D.C., Mengi in Reykjavík, Iceland, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention. As an advocate for contemporary music, he frequently develops new work with living composers, such as recent collaborations with Carolyn Chen, Nicholas Deyoe, Laure Hiendl, Tania Lanfer, Bruno Ruviaro, Steven Takasugi, and Yiheng Yvonne Wu.
Currently, he is Assistant Professor of Percussion at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He holds a DMA from the University of California – San Diego where he studied with Steven Schick and a BM from the University of Wisconsin where he studied with Anthony Di Sanza.