
A New York City native, Darick Kelly is a music educator in the New York City Department of Education. He has taught and arranged for numerous marching bands and indoor percussion units in the NYC metro area, including Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington, NY, Port Chester High School in Port Chester, NY, Passaic High School in Passaic, NJ and has given numerous clinics including the PAS Stony Brook University Day of Percussion, PAS Connecticut Day of Percussion, and the NYC Next Wave Percussion Clinic, alongside Blue Devils Percussion Director Scott Johnson.
Darick served as the snare technician for the WGI PIW United Percussion in 2009 and 2010, and was battery coordinator and percussion caption head for The Crossmen Drum and Bugle Corps in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Mr. Kelly has also arranged musical works for the New York Knicks, New Jersey/Brooklyn Nets, NFL sponsored United Way, and designer Tory Burch. He has also collaborated with one of Europe's premier electronic music DJs, Thomas Gold, whose set was performed in NYC and LA. Most recently, he collaborated with Capitol Records Artist Little Daylight on their album, "Hello Memory".
He began his marching career in 1997 and completed the final 2 years of his drum corps career in the snare line with The Blue Devils in 2004 and 2005. Outside of the marching activity, Darick received his BM in percussion performance from SUNY Purchase College and in 2008, he received his MA in music education from New York University, where he performed with the NYU Symphony Orchestra, and the NYU Percussion Ensemble and has performed some of the world’s greatest concert halls, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in NYC with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. In 2007, he performed the New York Premier of Luigi Morleo's "Nessun Popolo Oppresso 10."