Ryan Loken, Instructor of Percussion at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is known across the region as both a solo performer and a collaborator. Recent solo performances by Loken have highlighted the works of Francisco Perez, John Luther Adams, and Emma O’Halloran, among others. Loken has played with the Fargo Moorhead Symphony Orchestra since 2018. In 2019, he was a guest artist at the Oregon Fringe Festival in Ashland, Oregon, where his quartet, MinusOne Percussion, performed John Luther Adams’s Strange and Sacred Noise and joined other guest artists in creating immersive musical experiences. He has also collaborated with the Boston Brass. Loken is also an active pursuer of new music and has commissioned numerous works, including duets, quartets, and mixed chamber ensembles.
A believer in the impacts of physical and mental health on musicianship, Loken stresses the importance of a total-body approach to percussion. He is certified in Noa Kageyama’s “Bulletproof Musician” course, which teaches mental resilience and deliberate practice strategies. In addition, Loken incorporates the scientific approach of sports medicine including mobility and calisthenics training into his playing and teaching for lifelong healthy musicianship. He has been a member of Rob Knopper’s Audition Hacker Academy, which provides a systematic approach toward audition preparation, since the program’s founding in 2015 and served as a beta tester for some of Knopper’s other courses.
In addition to his instruction at UMD, Loken is on faculty at the International Music Camp where he works with students from the United States, Canada, and around the globe. He also offers private studio instruction. His percussion teachers include David Eyler and Sigurd Johnson, and he has studied composition with Jocelyn Hagen and Kyle Vandeburg. Loken has a Bachelor of Music in Percussion Performance from Concordia College and Masters degrees in Percussion and Music Theory Pedagogy from North Dakota State University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Percussion at NDSU with an expected program completion date of December 2023.