Word: percussionists
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...occasion was the world premiere of a 20-minute Concerto for Solo Percussion and Orchestra. If the event had a distinctly Japanese flavor, that was understandable. The star of the evening was Solo Percussionist Stomu Yamash'ta, 22, who took on all 47 instruments, and the conductor was Seiji Ozawa. Even Composer Heuwell Tircuit had an Oriental background; now a music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, he spent eight years as a percussionist with Japanese orchestras...
From Kitchen to Dining Room. Yamash'ta is determined to transform "the kitchen" (musicians' derisive label for the percussion section) into a dining room. "If I play Beethoven's Fifth 500 times in my life as an orchestra percussionist, what have I achieved?" he says. Adds Composer Tircuit: "What can a percussionist possibly do with a bass drum that will be interesting for any length of time? We've got to try to find a way to write pieces that are musically meaningful...
...fellow kitchen chefs, there is more creative music around for the forgotten men of the orchestra than ever before. Among composers of the past, Hector Berlioz was perhaps the first to pay much attention to the symphonic battery of drums. Later on, Stravinsky and Bartok proved that percussionists could do more interesting things than simply thump out a basic rhythm. Nowadays such avant-gardists as Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Luciano Berio and Karl-heinz Stockhausen treat the percussionist as a performer with rights (and responsibilities) equal to any other soloist...
...Hunched over his piano in the ship's dimly lit, couch-lined salon, he plays with a rolling, lilting style that is guaranteed not to rock the patrons or the boat, which is moored at the 79th Street causeway. The son of a New York Philharmonic percussionist, he says that the chatter of the customers does not bother him, especially since they put up to $200 a week in tips on his piano. His secret, he explains, is that "I don't play at them; I make them come to me." - Norman Wallace, at Chicago...
Needless to say, Mr. Avshalomov's ratcheting did credit to this little-understood and seldom appreciated instrument. Laurence L. Brunton '69 Principal Percussionist Harvard University Band