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Shayna Dunkelman is a percussionist active in the San Francisco Bay Area. She performs classical, contemporary, avant-garde, rock, pop-music, among other genres. Performing or recording for such composers as John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Ikue Mori and Maryclare Brzytwa, percussion pieces taking advantages of her versatility have been written for her by Steini Gunnarsson, Quentin Sirjacq, the Norman Conquest, Preshish Moments, and Fei Wu.
She has performed with Fred Frith, Fe-mail, Wei Wang, Dominique Leone, Les Stuck, and the Willie Winant Percussion Group. As a former member of the rock band Mute Socialite (along with Moe! Staiano, Alee Karim, Ava Mendoza, and Liz Allbee), shehas shared bills with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, XBXRX, and many others. Graduating with honors in both music and mathematics from Mills College in Oakland, CA in 2007, she studied percussion under Willie Winant and was named “Most Outstanding Senior Music Student for the Class of 2007.” During her time at Mills, she performed pieces by Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Jose Maceda, John Bischoff and Chris Brown, among others.
Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan to an Indonesian mother and a Jewish-American father, Shayna began playing Electone at 3, clarinet, piano and percussion at 8, and embarked on her professional career at the age of 15, playing percussion, drum set and gamelan alongside her mother, a musician and composer active in Asia and the Middle East.