Infinity Visual and Performing Arts has added a new instructor and new staff member.

Frank Valente will join the Infinity Percussion department as a hand drumming, cultural drumming and mallet percussion instructor. He is offering lessons to students and adults of all ages. Laura Becker has been named Infinity’s new office coordinator.

Valente, a Rochester native, is a recent graduate of the State University at Fredonia where he received a degree in music education and a masters degree in percussion performance. Valente is a seasoned percussionist and has performed with orchestras, big bands, straight ahead and jazz fusion bands, musical pits, 21st century contemporary music ensembles and African drumming ensembles. Valente has performed concerts in Rochester, Buffalo, Jamestown, Pennsylvania, Chautauqua County, Long Island and New York City. He is also an educator both in the public schools and at summer music camps including the Rhythm Section Instructor at the Chautauqua Institute High School Jazz Camp and Jazz Improvisation Instructor at New Horizon Summer Music Festival.

Valente’s journey with African drumming started in high school when he met master drummer Bernard Woma. Soon after he joined his school’s African Drumming Ensemble where would learn to play music of the Ewe people of Ghana. In college he performed e hwith the top African Drumming Ensembles for more than six years while playing music from Ghana, Guinea, Mali, the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso. During this time he studied with many guest artists including Woma (Ghana), Eddie Green (Ghana), Haruna Walusimbi (Uganda), and Joyce Woma (Ghana Traditional Dance). Recently he has been studying the frame drumming traditions of Egypt, Turkey and Iraq.

Valente is also an avid classical and jazz vibraphonist and leads his own groups including The Frank Valente Trio and co-leads the jazz fusion collective Mela. He has been performed with The New York Voices, Fredonia New Jazz Ensemble, Christos Rafalides, John Cross, Bruce Johnstone and Mike Kaupa.

Outside of his work as an educator and gigging percussionist, Valente is a computer music programmer. His main projects include designing a variety of digital synthesizers, guitar pedals and iPad instruments. Additionally, he has designed computer music systems that improvise, interpret written music, process and analyze sound and much more.

Becker is originally from Akron, Ohio, and has had a life-long involvement in the arts as a dancer, visual artist, musician, seamstress, and theatre student. She received a bachelor’s degree in theatre with a focus in non-profit arts administration from Baldwin Wallace University in 2014. Becker recently spent two years in Woodstock, N.Y., developing her work as an independent singer-songwriter and is in the process of recording her first album.