Women in Percussion with Brittany Baptista
Women representation in the drumming and percussion world is steadily growing year over year but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. Brittany Baptista and I talk about our experiences being the only woman in our career as percussionists.
Brittany Baptista
Director of Percussion, Lake Travis ISD
Brittany is an Austin-based percussionist and singer, specializing in contemporary and classical music.
Brittany grew up at the intersection of different worlds: the sights and sounds of musical Broadway theater, the language of poetry and creative writing, and the colors and timbres of percussion instruments. Seeking novelty through a combination of the things she loves most, Brittany embraces different art mediums and how they interact and coexist with one another.
As a first generation child in America, Brittany learned two things from her Filipino parents: knowledge can take you anywhere in this world, and music will keep you company along the way. Her parents enrolled her in piano lessons at the age of 4 and her choreographer uncle would take her to see just about every Broadway musical. After 8 years of piano lessons, she began playing percussion in school in the North Texas area at the age of 12.
Throughout middle school and high school, she was inspired by her teachers to continue playing music throughout her collegiate career, and marched in the front ensemble for the Blue Knights Drum & Bugle Corps in 2013 and 2014. She also began her involvement with WGI Percussion as a marimba player for Vigilantes Indoor Percussion in 2015.
If she wasn't singing or playing, Brittany had her nose in a book. Her love for language influenced her to attend The University of Texas at Austin as an English major with a concentration in creative writing and modern literature, where she also learned French, took percussion and piano lessons, … Read More
