Eri Isomura is a versatile freelance percussionist and marimbist from St. Paul, Minnesota. Recent performances include the Minnesota Winds, Minnesota Percussion Collective, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, Theater Mu, Cantus, National Lutheran Choir, Zeitgeist, Border CrosSing, and several other independent projects and ensembles.

Isomura is a founding member and Artistic Director of 10th Wave Chamber Music Collective, a Minneapolis-St. Paul based ensemble performing the music of living/recent composers. The ensemble served as an MPR Class Notes Artist ensemble for 21-22 and has won several grant awards to continue collaborating with artists to create new concert experiences. Isomura is also an active member of the Heartland Marimba since 2019, and has toured in the US and Canada in 2025, and performed at Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC) in 2022. Isomura is a regular drumset performer with Theater Mu, including productions “AGAIN” (2023), “Blended 和 Harmony” (2024), and one-off events.

Isomura's recording projects include the album "Twelve Months in Minnesota" (2023) consisting of percussion solos composed by Asuka Kakitani, "Musical Moments for Cello and Marimba" (2021) with her father Sachiya Isomura, a former cellist in the Minnesota Orchestra, "Champagne Confetti" self-titled pop classical album (2023), among other appearances in records by Jeremy Messersmith, Marissa Benedict, and Charlie McCarron. Performances for Video Recordings include that of PBS show "Buildings and Moods"(2026), and MiNiatures Series of the Minnesota Opera “A Very Special Minnesota Garden”(2021) and “Chim Lac” (2023).

She has commissioned and/or premiered works for marimba by composers such as Asako Hirabayashi, Asuka Kakitani, Michael Betz, Michael Maiorana, Ian A Cook, Elwyn A Fraser Jr., Jonathan Posthuma, and others.

As a featured soloist, recent notable performances include the Concordia Percussion Day (2024), Japanese American Society of Minnesota "Harukaze" Spring concert (2024), Minnesota Chorale and BorderCrosSing "Watersongs" (2024), and Isomura is the winner of the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Individual Arts Impact Grant with which she composed her own marimba work with electronic playback (2023).

While studying at the Boston Conservatory, she was a member of the New England Philharmonic and performed with the Brookline Symphony Orchestra. She performed for the "Times Two Series," a new music initiative based in Boston. She performed in John Luther Adams' piece Inuksuit, a percussion piece written for the outdoors at the Tippett Rise Music Festival, Bravo! Vail Music Festival, and Aspen Music Festival.

As an educator, Isomura was percussion faculty at St. Olaf College from 2018-2023, and currently the percussion class teacher at Yinghua Academy. She served as President of the Percussive Arts Society Minnesota Chapter 2022-2025, and in her term has coordinated the MNPAS Marimba Competition in 2024 and MNPAS Drumset Day in 2025. She has been a guest clinician at the Minnesota Percussion Association, MacPhail Center for Arts, adjudicated local competitions and high school solo and ensemble days, and teaches private lessons. She is also proudly on the committee of the MMEA “Sonic Revolution”, as the coordinator of the 2027 All-MN Percussion Ensemble, which will invite the community to pick up instruments and start playing drums together, no matter the skill level.

As a piano instructor she is a member of the Minnesota Music Teachers Association as well as the Minneapolis Music Teachers Forum. She has been a guest panelist for the Minnesota Orchestra Pre-Concert Talk and St. Olaf Arts Entrepreneurship, as well as a guest on several music podcasts.

Isomura's diverse musical background began with classical piano with Jean Krinke and percussion with Robert Adney. She continued her percussion and marimba studies with David Hagedorn, and drumset with Phil Hey at St. Olaf College, where she received her B.M. in Percussion Performance with Distinction in 2011. She completed her M.M. in Percussion Performance at The Boston Conservatory under the tutelage of Keith Aleo, Doug Perkins, Samuel Z Solomon, and Nancy Zeltsman.

Isomura is endorsed by Innovative Percussion and Koide Cymbals.

Isomura gives thanks to God for the wonderful opportunities in music and the vital support of her loving family and friends.