Gordon Stout is currently Professor of Percussion at the School of Music, Ithaca College, Ithaca, N.Y., where he has taught percussion since 1980. A composer as well as percussionist who specializes on marimba, he has studied composition with Joseph Schwantner, Samuel Adler and Warren Benson, and percussion with James Salmon and John Beck.
As a composer-recitalist Gordon Stout has premiered a number of his original compositions and works by other contemporary composers. Many of his compositions for marimba are published, and have already become standard repertoire for marimbists world-wide.
Gordon Stout's recordings are devoted not only to his own music, but also that of the general standard repertoire by important American composers. See the Discography section for detailed information.
A frequent lecture-recitalist for the Percussive Arts Society (PAS), Gordon Stout has appeared at twelve International PAS Conventions to date, as featured marimbist, as well as throughout the United States and Canada, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Hungary and Mexico. In May of 1983 he performed clinics and recitals in France, Germany, Holland and Belgium with "transcendental virtuosity", being described as "the Rubinstein of all aspects of the marimba".
Gordon Stout was on the Jury of the 1st and 2nd Leigh Howard Stevens International Marimba Competitions during the summers of 1995 and 1998. In the summer of 1998 he was a featured marimbist at the World Marimba Festival in Osaka, Japan and he was a member of the jury for the 2nd and 3rd World Marimba Competitions in Okaya, Japan and Stuttgart, Germany respectively.
In the summer of 2006 he was a member of the jury at the International Marimba Competition in Linz, Austria. On new years day in 2006 he conducted a 100 person marimba orchestra in the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan as part of the Taiwan International Percussion Convention.
Gordon Stout is a clinician/recitalist for Malletech, and performs on and owns their M5.0 Roadster five-octave marimba. Gordon Stout is represented by the Percussion Events Registry Company.
Gordon is also an endorser of Dream Cymbals and Gongs.