 Abby Savell
percussion, steel drums, vocalist: mezzo soprano, conga
  
Via Instrumental Casting, Abby appears in an two Apple commercials and on TV show Good Trouble. Also via Instrumental Casting, she performed at El Segundo Library's outreach location, the Farmer's Market, with her Nesta Steel Band.
Abby has performed with LA Curbside Entertainment.
Abby has been playing music since the age of five, when her grandma bought her an upright piano, on which she took lessons for ten years. At fourteen, she began playing percussion and took to it immediately. She attended Mission Viejo High School, known for its exemplary music program. She was extremely active in drumline, and as a principal mallet player and section leader, she led the group to dozens of state and regional victories. During this time, she also took jazz lessons with Paul Carman (of Frank Zappa fame).
Abby received her Bachelor's of Music in Percussion from Chapman University in 2002. Soon after, she joined the steel drum band Big Bamboo, playing tenor pan and performing at numerous events.
Abby is one of the only female steel drum/vocalists in the Los Angeles area, if not the only one. Abby completed her Master's degree in Percussion at California Institute of the Arts, studying Western percussion with David Johnson and John Bergamo, Latin Percussion with Aaron Serfaty, and improvisation with harpist Susan Allen.
In 2004, she performed the World Premiere of the highly virtuosic Sonata for Xylophone and Piano by acclaimed composer Bruce Levine. She also played percussion with bass-legend Charlie Haden, in his "Liberation Orchestra II", as well as performing with xylophone virtuoso Bob Becker on the East Coast and in Los Angeles.
Abby has performed with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra multiple times (including under renowned composer/conductor John Williams). She is the percussion chair and soloist for the award-winning "Orchestre Surreal", an eccentric, variety-style band. She also stays busy with the Kim Richmond Concert Jazz Orchestra, with whom she has performed at the Jazz Bakery, and on stage for the Spotlight Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Abby loves playing steel pan professionally, having performed at countless private and public functions with her band, Nesta, and as a soloist. She has worked and performed with the late steel drum virtuoso Ken Philmore, and visited Trinidad (the birthplace of steel drums). On steel pan, she appeared on the show "Outer Spaces," on HGTV. Other film work has also included a series of nationwide Radio Shack commercials on which she played steel drums and feature film
Final Encounter.
Abby also co-wrote and performed the music for the short film, My Brief Experience as an Amateur Bird Watcher & World Traveler, by John Joyce, which was composed entirely of acoustic percussion. To widen her breadth of experience, she participated in the "Broadway Percussion Seminar," at NYU, where she studied with many veteran percussionists of the Broadway musical scene. She was also a featured percussionist and steel drummer in the West Coast Composer's concert and was the featured musician for the podcast, "Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone."
During 2020, she performed in many remote, collaborative performances that can be found online, including both timpani parts for The Planets and steel drums for So Percussion. In 2021, she was a cast as a onscreen percussionist for Avril Lavigne's music video, "Flames," and she performed in the Ojai Music Festival for the groundbreaking work, "Rio de las Mariposas," a trio which featured Abby on steelpan with two harpists.
Abby is currently the host and percussionist for Experimental Composer/Percussion Workshop - hands-on session with film/TV/videogame composers, dedicated to using eclectic and standard percussion and combining sounds together to explore new timbres.
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