Alison Shaw enjoys a celebrated reputation as a performing percussionist, master teacher and clinician. She has embraced chamber music, orchestral performance and solo artistry, and has distinguished herself as an award-winning soloist and interpreter of new music. She has performed and premiered solo and chamber music throughout the United States and Europe.

An advocate of contemporary chamber music, she is executive Director and Co-Founder of Quorum Chamber Arts Collective, a mixed-instrumentation Quintet devoted exclusively to commissioning, recording and performing new works. Under Shaw's direction, Quorum has established the Fox River Chamber Music Festival in the greater Fox Cities Area (Oshkosh, Appleton and Green Bay).

Shaw also tours extensively with the percussion/tuba duo, Balance, a collaboration that has produced several commissions and premieres for this unique combination in addition to transcriptions of popular and folk music. She has also served as principal percussionist with many American orchestras, and currently serves as principal timpanist with the Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra and tours and records as principal timpanist with the Brass Band of Battle Creek.

Her work as a recording artist can be heard on the Equilibrium, Dorian, Albany, Mark, BBBC and FIM labels, and her solo CD, Signs of Intelligent Life has been released on the Eroica label.

Currently on the music faculty of The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, she has served on the music faculties of Michigan State University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Eastern New Mexico University, The Interlochen Center for the Arts and Musikverein und Festival in Estenfeld, Germany.

She is on the Board of Directors for the International Percussive Arts Society (PAS) and is Chairperson of the PAS College Pedagogy Committee. In addition, she has served PAS as the Associate Editor (keyboard) of Percussive Notes, the official journal of PAS, and as the New Mexico chapter vice-president, and Michigan chapter president.

Shaw earned her undergraduate degree from The University of Arizona, where she was awarded The College of Fine Arts Creative Achievement Award, and received her Masters and Doctoral degrees from The University of Michigan School of Music, where she was named The James Salmon-Charles Owen Memorial Percussion Scholar.

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