I played trombone starting in 5th grade and going through college. At the end of college, I started getting into percussion, as well. I played timpani for a Gilbert and Sullivan show and also played some with the MIT symphony, which gave its concerts in Kresge Auditorium.
The pinnacle of my percussion career came when the percussion section got mentioned specifically in a music review in the Boston Globe. The MIT symphony doesn't always get reviewed in the Globe, but we had a semi-famous soloist (also the wife of an MIT faculty member) playing with us, so we had a reviewer for this one show:
The piece in question was Aaron Copland's "Billy the Kid Suite." At one point, a gun fight takes place in the music: a duet between the bass drum (me) and timpani (my pal Kip). During rehearsals, we kept trying to outdo the other. The original music calls for normal volume, and that's how we started, with me using the soft felt mallet usually used for the bass drum. I decided that the bass drum should be louder than the timpani, though, so I kept increasing volume, gradually hitting the drum harder over the series of rehearsals. Kip, not to be outdone, kept making himself louder, too. I switched to a hard felt mallet so I could make even more noise out of the drum. Kip changed mallets as well. I couldn't keep up, so I switched to a wooden mallet, only very rarely used for bass drum. At some point during one rehearsal, the director finally realized what was going on, noticing how deafening we had (somewhat sneakily) become. Happily for us, he rather liked the effect and allowed us to keep what was a very non-standard interpretation of the music.
At the performance, we were dazzling. The lead-in to the gunfight features very soft chords in the strings and then, from nowhere:
WHAM!
WHAM!
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM!
The audience actually gasped! It was a great effect, and highly musically appropriate as well (it's a gunfight, after all). The review focused on the famous soloist. Here's what he had to say about the Copland:
There were lots of important percussion parts in the piece, but I like to think he was referring most of all to the gunfight duet with Kip and me that completely shocked the unassuming audience when the guns began shooting.
The pinnacle of my percussion career came when the percussion section got mentioned specifically in a music review in the Boston Globe. The MIT symphony doesn't always get reviewed in the Globe, but we had a semi-famous soloist (also the wife of an MIT faculty member) playing with us, so we had a reviewer for this one show:
The piece in question was Aaron Copland's "Billy the Kid Suite." At one point, a gun fight takes place in the music: a duet between the bass drum (me) and timpani (my pal Kip). During rehearsals, we kept trying to outdo the other. The original music calls for normal volume, and that's how we started, with me using the soft felt mallet usually used for the bass drum. I decided that the bass drum should be louder than the timpani, though, so I kept increasing volume, gradually hitting the drum harder over the series of rehearsals. Kip, not to be outdone, kept making himself louder, too. I switched to a hard felt mallet so I could make even more noise out of the drum. Kip changed mallets as well. I couldn't keep up, so I switched to a wooden mallet, only very rarely used for bass drum. At some point during one rehearsal, the director finally realized what was going on, noticing how deafening we had (somewhat sneakily) become. Happily for us, he rather liked the effect and allowed us to keep what was a very non-standard interpretation of the music.
At the performance, we were dazzling. The lead-in to the gunfight features very soft chords in the strings and then, from nowhere:
WHAM!
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM!
The audience actually gasped! It was a great effect, and highly musically appropriate as well (it's a gunfight, after all). The review focused on the famous soloist. Here's what he had to say about the Copland:
There were lots of important percussion parts in the piece, but I like to think he was referring most of all to the gunfight duet with Kip and me that completely shocked the unassuming audience when the guns began shooting.
I can totally picture you and Kip. Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteYes, that was a fun concert. I've lost touch with Kip, though a web search seems to imply that he's a diligent physicist.
ReplyDeleteYes, I don't know how diligent he is, but definitely a physicist. I hear he's still hitting timpani a little too loud in a number of ensembles!
ReplyDelete