STACY KOVACS

Stacy hails from sunny Buffalo, NY where she grew up playing piano first, starting tap dance at age 5, and then concert percussion in 3rd grade, Stacy learned as many percussion instruments as she could.  In 10th grade, she switched to trombone because her high school marching band didn’t have any trombone players! Self taught on trombone, she played jazz with Dick Clark’s American bandstand show for high school students, marched up Main Street USA at Disney World, Orlando, FL, and was a participant in the 1993 opening ceremonies of the World University Games.

Stacy then took her trombone to the Spartan Marching Band at Michigan State University where she majored in Marching Band (actually, Physiology), and had opportunities to play at two NCAA Final Four basketball tournaments, 3 BCS Bowl Games (including the Aloha Bowl in Honolulu, Hawaii), all home Men’s and Women’s basketball games, all home men’s hockey games, and countless other events.

Next she attended graduate school and in the process, sadly, put music aside. Fortunately, her medical training brought her to NYC in 2005 where she picked up the trombone again and joined the Big Apple Corps Marching band and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra.

Missing the drumming she did as a child, she found Philip Galinsky and Samba NY!, Ivo Araujo and Manhattan Samba, and Scott Kettner and Maracatu, NY. These top notch musicians showed her the ways of Brazilian percussion.

Playing at the Honk Festival in Boston in 2009, she first saw Marcus Santos and his own Bloco, aNova Brazil. She was blown away by the polyrhythms and variations of traditional Brazilian Rhythms.  In the meantime, she discovered Batala, a global drumming project franchise with over 40 bands, and in 2011, Stacy founded Batala New York City.