Kevin Zetina is a passionate performer, composer, and arranger of all things contemporary whether it be performing seminal works of the last century, premiering or writing brand new works, or arranging popular music for contemporary classical ensembles. As a percussionist, he has performed with members of Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Signal, the JACK Quartet, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Having grown up as a guitarist playing various sorts of death metal, Kevin has always been drawn to music that is experimental in nature. In this effort to push musical experimentation, Kevin started the first student-run new music ensemble at the Yale School of Music: Versicolor. The group champions composers who would otherwise be underrepresented and provides a space for contemporary music at Yale. Kevin has played frequently with the Austin based contemporary chamber music group, Density 512 and has served as the Production Director for the Nief-Norf Summer Festival.

Kevin currently serves as Lecturer of Percussion at the University of Tennessee Knoxville where he teaches applied lessons to percussion majors, Percussion Methods to Music Education majors, and directs the UT Chamber Percussion Ensemble. He champions a diverse array of contemporary music through his position by programming everything from Caroline Shaw to Animal Collective. His students have also gotten opportunities to premiere brand new works by fellow student composers as well as composers such as Marc Mellits and Emma O’Halloran. Being a composer himself, Kevin strives to blend his backgrounds in both contemporary classical and popular styles to create something that is both unique yet accessible to audiences from either background. Some recent projects include Coalescence (2021), a piece for mallet quartet & two pianos commissioned and premiered by the Yale Percussion Group, shepard tone (2020), a piece for Vibraphone & Piano premiered by Tactus at the Manhattan School of Music, and Sink (2019), a percussion quartet premiered by the UT Percussion Ensemble.

Previously he has taught percussion lessons for undergraduate students at Yale College and high school students at the Cheshire Academy, a private college preparatory boarding school in Connecticut. His students at Yale College, all of whom were non-music majors, have excelled comparably to conservatory students through winning spots at summer music festivals as well as the College Band Director’s National Association’s Intercollegiate Band. Kevin has also worked with high school students in Texas as a Marching Percussion Instructor and has guided many young percussionists as a private lesson teacher throughout the Round Rock/Leander area. While there, he coached the Walsh MS Honor Band as they were invited to perform at the Midwest Clinic.

Kevin holds a BM from the Eastman School of Music with the Howard Hanson Scholarship where he studied with Michael Burritt, and he earned his MM and MMA degrees from Yale University as a Havemeyer Scholarship recipient under Robert van Sice.