BIOGRAPHY: Lindsey Schust

(Director and Founder of the Ragged Mt. Band) Lindsey resides in rural New England, where she teaches music, coaches professionally, writes songs and composes music.  She is a percussion faculty member at the Concord Community Music School in Concord, NH.  She also co-directs the Songweaver Drummers, and the Timbre Drum Ensemble with Grace Schust.  Lindsey is a member of the Artists in Healthcare NH State Council for the Arts roster as well.

In addition to teaching, Lindsey performs  in New England as a percussionist, and also leads her her own Country group “the Ragged Mountain Band”, which she formed in 2011.  With the Ragged Mountain Band, Lindsey put out a single “Hippie Hill” on-line and self produced a music by the same name.  Lindsey writes her own music for the band and arranges traditional Country and Folk songs.

Lindsey is Classically trained in piano and composition, and she has a Master’s degree in Music Composition from Tufts University, and a Bachelor’s in Music from Brandeis University.  She studied under award winning composers: Yehudi Wyner, David Rakowski and John McDonald.  She has also studied African and Afro-Cuban drumming at Berklee College of Music with Joe Galeota.  Born to a family of drummers, Lindsey started learning African traditional drumming as a child from her mother Grace Schust, and later they both went on to study under master drummers such as Malian masters Abdoul Doumbia, Issa Coulibaly, Papus Diabaté, Moussa Traoré and Sidi Joh Camara.  Lindsey and her family worked closely with Babatunde Olatunji (the late drumming icon and Lindsey’s godfather), by studying drumming with him and by building his large Ashiko drums. Musical influences and training combine classical composition, Afro-Cuban percussion, West African drumming, and Americana, Folk, Bluegrass and Country Music.  With rich musical background, Lindsey melds her musical influences of Classical, Afro-Cuban percussion, West African drumming, and Americana, Folk, Bluegrass and Country Music together into uniquely rhythm driven songs.