An assistant professor of percussion at the University of North Texas since the fall of 2000, Christopher Deane brought a solid resumé to the position. The principle timpanist of the Greensboro Symphony for nine years and the North Carolina Symphony for a decade, Deane has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, and has recorded with the North Carolina Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Crofut Consort, the Mallarme Chamber Players, and the St. Stevens Chamber Orchestra. Deane has shown equal strength as a chamber music instrumentalist, performing with the Aeolian Chamber Players, Percussion Group Cincinnati, and the New Century Saxophone Quartet. He was a founding member of the North Carolina-based Philidor Percussion Group. A native of Winston-Salem, NC, Deane was attracted to music as a youngster. Although his parents were not musical, he was drawn to his brother's guitar, which he taught himself to play. Although he studied piano in the fourth grade, Deane was initially self-trained as a percussionist. He continued his studies with jazz drummer and middle-school teacher Harry Schnell and with J. Massie Johnson, a former timpanist for the St. Louis Symphony who taught at the North Carolina School of the Arts, one of the first art schools to include high-school and college students. A first-place winner in the composition competition held by the Percussive Arts Society in 1982, Deane finished in second place a decade later. ~ Craig Harris, Rovi