Inspired by his passion for chamber music, percussionist Victor Caccese is dedicated to bringing percussion chamber music to diverse audiences. A founding member of The Sandbox Percussion Quartet, Victor celebrates the intimacy of chamber music and explores how percussion can enhance audience engagement. He is active in the discovery of new works for percussion through experimentation and collaboration with composers and other performers. Considered by many to be extremely versatile, Victor is a reliable chamber musician, an adamant solo percussionist, and skillful orchestral percussionist. Utilizing this wide skill set he creates opportunity, allowing for mature interpretation and meaningful collaboration.
Active in today’s new music scene, Victor has appeared at the Norfolk New Music Workshop in 2011 and 2012 both as an individual and member of Sandbox. Over the course of these two summers, he assisted in 18 world premieres from a selective group of 12 young composers from all over the world. In addition he also performed works by Martin Bresnick and James Wood, including Mr. Wood’s percussion solo masterpiece, Rogosanti. After a performance the composer praised Victor’s playing as “beautiful with a very nice pacing and fabulous interpretation”.
Victor has attended three consecutive sessions of the So Percussion Summer Institute (SoSI) in Princeton, NJ from 2009 to 2011, where he enjoyed working with the acclaimed So Percussion Group. He gave multiple performances of works by today’s leading composers, including Steve Reich, David Lang, John Cage, Andrea Mazariello, Jason Treuting, Kate Neal and Dan Deacon. During Victor’s last year at SoSI, he collaborated with electronic artist Dan Deacon on the world premiere of his piece, Purse Hurdler performed at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City. Victor is also a member of Novus NY, a new music ensemble comprised of some of New York’s top performers, and Le Train Bleu based in New York City. Le Train Bleu was founded by Yale flute professor, Ransom Wilson, and is dedicated to performing old and new works in contemporary settings. They have performed in venues such as Galapagos Art Space, Symphony Space, and DROM.
In the summer of 2011, as a member of Sandbox Percussion, Victor was a finalist in The New England Chamber Music Competition, an international competition open to all genres of music and instrumentation. Together with The Peabody Percussion Group, Victor was a finalist in the Percussive Arts Society International Convention competition in 2012 where he performed James Wood’s Village Burial with Fire.
In addition to promoting percussion chamber music, Victor also has a passion for teaching young musicians. Victor served on the faculty of the Peabody Institute Preparatory Program from 2010 to 2011. He currently assists in coaching the Yale Band Percussion Group and gives private percussion lessons to Yale University students. Victor steeps his students in chamber music skills as a way to master ensemble interaction as well as developing individual skills. Victor implements Sandbox as an apparatus for teaching chamber music to young musicians. It becomes a massive tool for learning due to hands on interaction with the members of Sandbox Percussion.
Victor completed his Bachelor of Music Degree at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and is pursuing his Masters of Music Degree at the Yale School of Music under the tutelage of Robert van Sice.