Marimbist Britton-Rene Collins performs works by Astor Piazzolla, J.S. Bach, Julie Spencer, Toshio Hosokowa, Chin-Cheng Lin, and Joseph Schwantner, live from the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist, Chicago.
Hailed as an “Astounding Virtuoso” and “Exhilarating” performer, percussionist Britton René Collins is a winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition, receiving the Ambassador Prize for her exceptional musicianship and demonstrated passion for creating social change in her endeavors as both an educator and performer.
A Grand Prize winner of the 2022 Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition and the 2021 Chicago International Music Competition, Britton-René has performed hundreds of concerts as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Canada, and Europe, in venues including Carnegie Hall. She has soloed with over a dozen orchestras, including the Grammy Award-winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Her current season includes performances alongside the Battle Creek Symphony, the Greenwich Village Orchestra, the Central Oregon Symphony, the Lincoln Symphony, and the Johns Creek Symphony. Her past seasons included performances alongside the Rogue Valley Symphony Orchestra, the Western Piedmont Symphony, the Albany Symphony Orchestra (GA), the Marquette Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Iowa, the Meridian Symphony, and the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra. In addition to her active solo career, Britton-René enjoys life as a chamber musician and co-director with her New York City-based groups “Excelsis Percussion Quartet” and “Vision Duo.”
As an advocate for new music, Britton-René’s current projects involve generating new solo and chamber works for multi-percussion and marimba. Most recently, she became the first percussionist to ever be awarded the prestigious Princeton University Mary Mackall Gwinn Hodder Fellowship (2024-2025). During her fellowship year, she will conduct research and commission new works by underrepresented composers as part of her 10-month appointment, “Sphygmology— Cultural Exchange for Solo Percussion,” at the Lewis Center for the Arts, which will culminate with her debut performance installation, “Sphygmology,” centered on desegregating Western Classical Music spaces through utilizing percussion as a medium for celebrating Black identity.
