Robert van Sice is considered one of the world’s foremost performers of contemporary music for marimba, having premiered more than 100 works for the instrument. Four of the seminal works in the marimba repertoire were written for him: Peter Klatzow’s Dances of Earth and Fire, Alejandro Viñao’s Estudios de Frontera, Martin Bresnick’s double marimba concerto, Grace, and James Wood’s Spirit Festival with Lamentations, which introduced the newly developed quarter-tone marimba. In his varied performing career, van Sice has given recitals in more than 30 countries, appeared as a soloist with numerous orchestras, and been featured on international radio stations.

Van Sice is also one of the world’s most respected percussion teachers whose students are playing in symphony orchestras and contemporary chamber ensembles, winning competitions, and maintaining solo careers around the world. In addition to his work teaching graduate-level percussionists at the Yale School of Music, he is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music. In May of 2024 he retired from his position as Professor of Percussion at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University where he served on the faculty for over twenty years. Previously, he headed Europe’s first diploma program for solo marimba players at the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands. Van Sice has given hundreds of master classes around the world and is often on the juries of international competitions including serving as the President of the Jury at the ARD Competition in Munich. He has released six CDs on the Etcetera, Mode, and New World Records labels. For the past three decades, van Sice has collaborated with the Adams Corporation in the Netherlands in designing a series of marimbas and mallets that bear his name.

Performances
London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps (Geneva), L’Itineraire (Paris), Amadinda Percussion Group, Kroumata Percussion Ensemble, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, Percussive Rotterdam, Sō Percussion, Ars Musica, Blossom, Darmstadt Course for New Music, Archipel, London Meltdown, Béla Bartók Festival (Hungary), North American New Music Festival, Ultima Festival (Oslo).