Percussive

We had a band concert on Saturday evening. Overall it went pretty well, but the highlight of the evening was our guest percussionist.

Our concert was called “Repercussions” and was very percussion-centric. Which I love because that means modern composition. In addition to a percussion concerto and a crazy xylophone medley, our guest played this:

Oh man was it good.

I sat there in the dark just enraptured watching him play. Total splooosh.

All the nuance. The different mallets. The dynamic shaping. The tempos! The spread of the four mallets. The crazy rapid passage. Not to mention the absolute difficulty in syncing the live marimba with the synth recording!

Holy. Fuckballz.

And I just had to laugh when after the last note was played, out percussionist was met with what could best be termed “polite applause”. The piece just sailed right over their heads.

I mean, the audience gave our guy standing O’s on his other two pieces, but then again they were fire and flourish. This was much more introspective and a study in control.

Man did I love it. It’s been noodling around in my head ever since.

I hope you take 8 minutes out of your day to give it a listen.