April 8, 2008

Purdue Bands to present 'Percussion Under Construction'

The free concert, featuring percussionists from all Purdue Bands & Orchestra ensembles, will take place at 2:30 p.m. Sunday (April 13) in Stewart Center's Loeb Playhouse.

In past years, the annual percussion event has featured everything from crazy to classical works, and director Pamela Nave said this year will be no exception.

She said she wants "Percussion Under Construction" to give the audience clues as to what goes into the construction of not only good percussionists, but interesting percussion works.

At the beginning of the concert, the Loeb stage will look like a construction site.

"We always have a funky opener," Nave said. Following a construction video, percussionists dressed like Village People will perform "YMCA." In "Men At Work," performers will use hammers and saws to make their own brand of music.

To take the construction theme to a different level, Nave said the concert will offer the audience a distinctive experience with the four instruments percussion players have to master – snare drums, timpani, marimba and drum set.

"We call them the four food groups of percussion, and to be a percussionist, you have to be extremely proficient on all four," she said.

Performers will play all the instruments in controlled cacophony, which offers a snippet of what they experience all the time in rehearsals, Nave said.

From that point, pieces will be presented in order of their difficulty, starting with the easiest works for percussion. Nave said the challenging ending to the concert will be "XPLOSION," a work for a drumline that's loud, hard and fast.

Other tunes along the way will include an original piece for marimba and percussion ensemble written by Bonyea Killebrew, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts from Kokomo, Ind. Titled "Machine Planet," the piece serves as the ultimate example of construction because the composer also is performing it, Nave said.

"We are planning on entering this piece in the Percussive Arts Society's large composition competition," she said.

"Omphala Centric Lecture" will feature a minimalistic look at construction. Like other minimalistic art works, it's not what people are used to because there is no melody, Nave said.

She said it will be easy to find patterns and rhythms in "Wop Upside the Head," a light-hearted piece where drummers make music on detached drumheads.

"They will play cool patterns and are working on interesting visuals to go with it," she said. "It's one those fun pieces that's really difficult."

"Sprint" is a musical race, Nave said.

"It's a technically difficult piece for marimba and percussion ensemble that requires fast hands," she said. "Simulating a race, it begins with the pop of a starter gun and the marimba plays this nasty monster lick that just progresses through the whole piece."

The concert also will feature a guest spot that will be filled by the Decatur Central High School percussion ensemble performing Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train."

Writer: Christy Jones, (765) 494-1089, christyjones@purdue.edu

Source: Kathy Matter, Purdue Bands public relations director, (765) 496-6785, kcmatter@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

To the News Service home page