William Cahn

William Cahn joined the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra as principal percussionist after graduating form the Eastman School of Music in 1968. He met his wife, Ruth, while they were students at Eastman studying percussion with William Street and John Beck, and since 1968, they have performed together in the RPO's percussion section. Mr. Cahn has appeared regularly as soloist with the RPO, and he has also performed as percussion soloist with the symphony orchestra and at music festivals throughout the United States and Canada.

Since 1971, he has been a member of the internationally acclaimed percussion group, Nexus, performing in concerts and on radio and television broadcasts all over the world. As a member of NEXUS, he has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, the New Japan Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the BBC Symphony, and many other orchestras. NEXUS has been widely recorded on disc, film, and video, and in 1989 NEXUS was honored with the Toronto Arts award in music.

Born in Philadelphia in 1946, Cahn has composed and arranged dozens of works including music for solo percussion, works for chamber percussion ensemble, and orchestral pieces. His compositions have been performed and broadcast by the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Buffalo, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kingston, La Jolla, Memphis, Ottawa, Rochester, St. Paul, Toledo, Toronto, Victoria, Winnipeg, and his orchestral arrangements of popular music from the 1920s featuring solo xylophone have been performed by virtually every major North American orchestra.