Word: percussionist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Today marks the sixteenth anniversary of the first recording session on which a full set of drums was used. It happened in Chicago at the old Okeh studios, and the percussionist who broke away from the hard and fast rule of showing up with only a snare drum, cymbal, woodblock, and cowbell was Eugene Krupa, fresh out of school and still on Camels...
...Percussionist Cage, 30, is firmly convinced that percussive noise poems will bulk large in the musical future. Says he: "People may leave my concerts thinking they have heard 'noise,' but will then hear unsuspected beauty in their everyday life. This music has a therapeutic value for city dwellers. . . ." Born in Los Angeles, Cage was trained for the ministry, gave up the Church to study the piano in Europe. His steadfast fellow percussionist is his blonde wife Xenia Cage, surrealist sculptress, daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. She helps Cage find his instruments of "unsuspected beauty" in junk yards...
...lifted his baton to begin a Festival Fanfare which he had written for the jubilee. Next to Stainer's Sevenfold Amen, the Fanfare was probably the longest (ten minutes) ever composed, gave every instrument in the orchestra something to do, finally had even the Schellenbaum (manned by a percussionist) shaking like a hula dancer...
...shot through with potentialities. Purpose of his music, explains Cage, is the exploration of sounds and rhythms which were previously considered nonmusical. He hopes some day to make use of electrical instruments capable of playing sliding tones, get any desired sounds in any desired rhythm. For the present, Percussionist Cage contents himself with "dragons' mouths," wood blocks, rice bowls hit with chopsticks, temple gongs, pipe lengths, secondhand brake drums, baby rattles, maracas, wind glass, thunder sheets, washboards, cowbells, "fin-gersnaps & footstomps," flower pots, güiro, sirens (for the use of which he had to get police permission), claves...