Britton-René Collins, percussion

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, The Kennedy Center, and the Mondavi Center. 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, the Johns Creek Symphony, and the Sphinx Virtuosi. 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.” Her upcoming chamber collaborations include touring with the Sphinx Virtuosi, where she will premiere a new drum set concerto by Curtis Stewart.

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.

Britton-René’s recent highlights include performing alongside members of the New York Philharmonic, attending the soundSCAPE new music composition and performance exchanges in Switzerland and Italy, premiering three new works at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention since first making her PASIC Artist debut in 2021, and participating in the Banff Centre's Evolution: Classical program. As an Artist Endorser, Britton-René proudly performs using Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Zildjian cymbals, Marimba One instruments, and Remo drumheads.  

Born in the U.S., Britton-René began playing the piano at age five. She discovered percussion at eight years old when she became intrigued by the drum set. She quickly fell in love with playing rock, jazz, and pop music on the drum set, which ignited her enthusiasm to explore various percussion instruments and styles of music. She received her B.M. from the University of Toronto with Aiyun Huang, Beverley Johnston, and John Rudolph, where she won the University of Toronto Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition and performed the Canadian premiere of Sergei Golovko’s first marimba concerto alongside Maestro Uri Mayer and the UTSO. Britton-René received her M.M. from the University of Michigan, where her primary instructors were Doug Perkins and Ian Antonio.