UMaine Music Students to Perform in Spring Percussion Ensemble April 20
Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO — Big drums, little drums, kettle drums and ceramic drums, not to mention metal chimes, triangles and cymbals, are a few of the more than 50 instruments University of Maine music students will use for a percussion ensemble concert April 20 at Minsky Recital Hall.
Approximately 10 students in UMaine music professor Stuart Marrs’ Percussion Ensemble will put on a performance that demonstrates use and sounds of the many percussive instruments, but also one that is an energetic and highly visual event.
“It’s always very visual,” says Marrs. “The stage is just crowded with instruments in every concert we do, and you have people sometimes running back and forth from instrument to instrument. You’re looking at a person surrounded by instruments.”
The concert is the culmination of the percussion ensemble class and usually is a popular event, according to Marrs.
“We’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years and we’ve built up a following,” he says.
The audience, Marrs says, can expect to experience a broad spectrum of percussion instruments from all over the world. “Everyone who goes to these concerts is intrigued by the variety we have,” he adds.
Marrs will conduct the concert. Performers include student Ryan Parker, a senior who is returning next year to pursue postgraduate work in the music department. He’ll be soloist in a marimba piece, “Uneven Souls,” by Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic. The piece involves the soloist and three accompanying multiple-percussion players, with some of the musicians performing with nine different sets of instruments, according to Marrs, in addition to male voices.
The work can be characterized as a joyous celebration of Macedonian rhythm and melody. Many of the rhythmic motives are based folk dance of the Balkans, according to Marrs.
Some of the other instruments being used in the concert include the Peking opera gong, the Middle-Eastern darabukka, various multi-tongued slit drums, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, timpani, chimes, glockenspiel, xylophone, triangle, tam-tams, wood-block, castanets and temple blocks.
The program begins with “Spanish Dance” by Enrique Granados, a late 19th Century composer, which Marrs calls one of Granados’ most famous works which has been transcribed for marimba quartet.
“This medium is gaining increasing favor among performing percussion ensembles due to its ability to exploit the vast repertoire of melodic and harmonic music composition — an area that percussion instruments of indefinite pitch can only imagine,” Marrs says in his website about the piece.
“Blue Rhythm Quintet” by Anthony Korf is an energetic work utilizing 10 tom-toms, four timpani, bongos, bass drum, suspended cymbal, cowbells and three gongs.
Other pieces include “Pulsations,” by Max Lifchitz and “Theme and Variations” by William Kraft.
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $6. Ticket information is available by calling the Maine Center for the Arts box office at (207) 581-1755 or toll-free 1-800-MCA-TIXX.