Word: percussionists
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After the Webern, Foss performed his Echoi for four instruments, assisted by Tsutsumi, percussionist Jan Williams, and clarinetist Edward Yadzinski. The title of the work tells its story. Echoi is Greek for "echoes," and, as Foss explains in his notes to the recorded version of the work, is also a name for some ancient Arabian modes. The piece is in four parts, somewhat loosely-structured, and is partly aleatory-at a random signal from the percussionist, the performers jump back to an earlier section of the work and replay it, in order to destroy whatever structure may have been created...
...down again as I have mentioned, almost as if there were something immoral about well-ordered music. While the piece itself might be very pleasing as an example of the new music, the composer goes out of his way to make it displeasing. The senseless, random posturing of the percussionist as he goes about the stage, beating on a steel pipe, and on the piano's strings and sounding board, as well as anything else which comes to hand, make the listener take the work less than seriously, and obscures its spontaneous musical value...
...Finally, if we tried to maintain departmental representation in the face of reduced numbers, we would be forced to develop and abide by distastefully rigid admissions criteria. An engineer, a physicist, an actor, or a percussionist would have to be selected with far greater predictability than is now our desire or practice. Undergraduate admissions would become as the graduate schools necessarily are, a departmental phnomenon...
...then. Nonetheless, when Zubin hit it, they hit it too. When the rest of the orchestra said "Bleep," the violins joined in. When they were required to do fey finger snaps over their heads, they complied. When asked to belch, literally, they drew the line and said "Blurp." When Percussionist William Kraft, dutifully following the score, fired a popgun, they played on unblinking. Meanwhile, platformed six feet above the orchestra, the Mothers were lullabying away at some of their "greatest hits," like Lumpy Gravy, Duke of Prunes and Who Needs the Peace Corps. Then, everyone in the orchestra suddenly screamed...
...must pay the University for policemen, light, and heat. HRO has to pay for posters, tickets, rental of instruments, and publicity. The orchestra cannot afford to have its own percussion instruments and therefore must rent from Jack's Drum Shop or borrow from the band. For every rehearsal the percussionist runs back and forth from Sanders carrying timpani, xylophones and miscellaneous other equipment. At best, the orchestra breaks even financially after a concert...