The BOOM Team
Paul Houle – President and Founder
Paul is founder and president of Boom! The Power of Rhythm™. Boom is a natural evolution that combines his expertise as a performer, entrepreneur, keynote speaker and workshop facilitator. Through Boom, he creates and delivers hands-on workshops using rhythm and music that enable organizations to be great teams.
Paul’s constant quest to know what makes each organization tick, and his expertise in the area of global music, have allowed him to create truly innovative programs that address issues affecting businesses today. His warm, charismatic presentation style puts participants at ease as he leads them to achieve more than they thought possible. Paul has worked closely with high-level executives to design and deliver hundreds of workshops for top level management through to line workers. These highly customized programs continue to resonate within organizations for years by forging new bonds between participants.
Aside from running Boom, Paul served on Faculty at the Royal Conservatory of Music for 20 years as Conductor of RCM Percussion Ensembles and Director of Percussion Studies. He also founded and served as Executive Director of The RCM World Music Centre. BOOM was born through Paul’s groundbreaking work as one of the original artist/educators in the RCM’s highly successful “Learning through the Arts” program; were he developed several ground breaking programs for the Toronto District School Board that used global percussion to help students meet curriculum outcomes in a variety of subject areas.
As a musician, his performance career includes work for radio, television, and film as well as several recordings. He has performed with a wide range of ensembles including the Canadian Opera Co., the National Ballet, the Esprit orchestra, Shaw Festival Orchestra and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Flaming Dono African Drum and Dance Ensemble, the Batterie Park Percussion Ensemble, the Evergreen Club Gamelan ensemble and was honoured to perform with John Wyre’s World Drum Ensemble in Lisbon, Portugal for EXPO ’98 and in Hannover, Germany for Expo 2000. He has performed in Europe, Japan, Indonesia, the Caribbean, the U.S., and Canada.
Ray Dillard – Workshop facilitator & Professional Recording Engineer
Ray Dillard joined Boom in 1999 with over 15 years of experience developing corporate teambuilding programs using drums and percussion instruments. He is one of the pioneers in this field and prior to moving to Toronto from Houston, Texas; he led several teambuilding initiatives for corporations in the US.
A man of many talents – you will often find Ray traveling the world either running a Boom workshop, being the business manager for the renowned percussion ensemble “Nexus”, acting as the recording engineer for the many of world’s great drumming talents or performing on stage as a player.
Ray was percussionist for the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra for eight years. During that time he was Director of Percussion Studies at West Texas State University in Canyon, Texas. He then served as Guest Lecturer and Instructor of Percussion at Texas Tech University, from 1984-1985. Ray then moved to Houston, Texas, to become the head of Percussion and MIDI Technology at San Jacinto College which continued until 1998. After moving to Toronto he is served on faculty at the Royal Conservatory of Music.
As a performer, The Paul (English) Improvising Chamber Orchestra, P.I.C.O., was at the center of his Houston-based performance activity. P.I.C.O. developed a unique repertoire centered around Ray’s eclectic percussion battery that spanned jazz and classical idioms. A key member of the World Drum Ensemble, he has performed in Brisbane, Australia at World Expo 88, in Taiwan, at the Taipei International Music Festival (1996), in Lisbon, Portugal for EXPO ’98 and in Hannover, Germany for Expo 2000.
Recording credits include Grammy and Juno nominated projects with artists and ensembles from around the world. Ray’s work can also be heard on recordings spanning styles as varied as Renaissance, Classical, jazz, rock, contemporary Christian, Tejano, and experimental music.