[Dixielandjazz] It ain't easy being a percussionist

[Steve barbone]

And we thought drumming was easy. :-) VBG

Maybe not OKOM, but a great read for the drummers on the list. Anyone who
uses 6 different cow bells has to be simpatico.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Philharmonic Musician Seeks the Perfect Boom, Bang or Ping

NY TIMES By ANTHONY TOMMASINI - April 21, 2006

FOR Joseph Pereira, a percussionist and timpanist in the New York
Philharmonic, practicing rhythmic patterns on the timpani or melodic riffs
on the xylophone is the easy part of his job.

His work also involves arduous, offbeat projects like searching for gongs
and temple bells when the Philharmonic tours Asia or soaking imported Irish
calfskins in the tub of his Upper East Side apartment to soften them up
before stretching them over the circular hoops of the timpani.

Percussionists are constantly on the lookout for chimes, exotic cymbals,
wood blocks: anything that might produce a particular sound or color called
for by a composer. A few years ago, while visiting with his wife's family in
Kentucky, Mr. Pereira went trolling through junkyards, where he found some
brake drums that when struck with a mallet proved ideal for producing
specific clanks and plinks in John Adams's "On the Transmigration of Souls,"
a 9/11 memorial piece, which won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music.

"I found everything I needed for that piece in the Kentucky junkyard," Mr.
Pereira said recently, including brake drums for vehicles ranging from a
Toyota compact to a Mack truck.

Like many percussionists and timpanists, Mr. Pereira makes sticks and
mallets from scratch, and he also helps maintain the Philharmonic's timpani,
commonly called kettledrums: those shiny copper basins fitted with calfskin
or plastic tops. (Timpani produce different pitches through pedals or
adjustable screws that stretch the tops.)

In percussion and timpani circles, Mr. Pereira is renowned for having won
his prestigious post in 1998 at 23, while still in his second year in the
master's program at the Juilliard School. Since 2004 Mr. Pereira, now 31,
has been the acting principal timpanist, replacing his teacher and mentor
Roland L. Kohloff, who died of cancer in February, at 71.

You can hear Mr. Pereira in action this afternoon and tomorrow evening, when
Mstislav Rostropovich conducts the Philharmonic in a Shostakovich program
that includes the Symphony No. 10, which has a notoriously difficult timpani
part, especially in the exuberantly frenzied finale.

"A lot of my practicing is preparation," Mr. Pereira said during an
interview in his studio at the Juilliard School, where he now holds the
teaching post Mr. Kohloff once held. "I usually come in to the Philharmonic
early to make sure everything is working properly, to make sure I'm getting
the right sounds and colors."

Still, making things, especially drumsticks and mallets, eats up hours. And
he never knows when he may chance on the perfect building material.

A couple of months ago Mr. Pereira, who loves to cook, was making dinner at
home for some colleagues: beef braised with French wine. The wine, a newer
make, came in bottles corked with plastic. Timpanists often use cork instead
of wood on the inside of a mallet to soften the sound somewhat. "So I
thought, let's give this plastic a try," Mr. Pereira said. "It wound up
making a great pair of sticks."

Ah, sticks. "Once, I was in the gardening district in New York, and I bought
a six-foot length of bamboo fence, because we use bamboo for the sticks," he
said. "You're lucky if you get five or six pairs out of that length of
bamboo, because the sticks have to be straight, and the line of knots has to
be even." 

He was in luck that time, getting his half-dozen pairs "including these," he
said, proudly holding up the sticks with the plastic-cork insides. "These
are perfect for the third movement of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion
and Celesta." 

The Philharmonic recently appointed a new principal percussionist, so Mr.
Pereira will return next season to the position for which he was hired:
assistant principal timpanist and section percussionist.

The timpani are an instrumental class unto themselves. Percussionists play
an array of drums, keyboard instruments, mallet instruments, triangles,
gongs and whatnot, but timpanists are specialists. Mr. Pereira's job is the
only one in orchestra that officially bridges two sections. Within the
orchestral world, he is the equivalent of a pitcher who doubles as
shortstop. 

To his students Mr. Pereira has a dream job. If you are a violinist or a
clarinetist, there are a number of ways you can make a living in music. If
you are a percussionist or a timpanist, you want a post like Mr. Pereira's.
What else is there?

How did he come to get this coveted job at such an early age?

Growing up on Long Island, Mr. Pereira took piano lessons but was drawn more
to being a rock drummer. He did not see his first New York Philharmonic
concert until his sophomore year in high school: a summer concert with Zubin
Mehta conducting Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. "That was the first time I
saw Roland play," Mr. Pereira said.

His burgeoning interest in classical music inspired him to join the New York
Youth Symphony. An epiphany came when the orchestra performed Bartok's
Concerto for Orchestra. "That was the first piece for which I really looked
at the entire score, beyond my part," he said. "I remember having a tape of
it and wearing it out."

He got his undergraduate degree in music at Boston University, where he
carried a double major in percussion and composition. His teacher there
encouraged him to pursue graduate studies with a top-notch timpanist. So Mr.
Pereira headed to Juilliard and to Mr. Kohloff.

When he won the auditions for the Philharmonic post (on his second try),
Kurt Masur, then the music director, was concerned that Mr. Pereira was
still in the midst of a master's degree program. "He told me that I must
focus all my energies on the Philharmonic," Mr. Pereira said. "But several
colleagues told me that I would regret it if I dropped out of school."

So he went part time. It took four years, but he earned his master of music
degree. Besides finding a mentor at Juilliard, Mr. Pereira also met his wife
there: Misty Tolle Pereira, a horn player and student colleague, now the
director of educational outreach at the 92nd Street Y.

Adjusting to conductors and meeting their requests for particular colors or
articulations is a daily part of the job. When he joined the orchestra, he
assumed that Mr. Masur, being German, would prefer more traditionally
German, old-school sounds on the timpani, "something boinkier," he said,
demonstrating on the Philharmonic's timpani on the stage of Avery Fisher
Hall. The sound he produced was mellow, with a throbbing vibrato. "But Masur
actually liked a more modern sound, with a little more articulation, more
full-bodied," he said, demonstrating again, this time producing crisp tones
that rippled through the hall and, heard up close, rattled one's eardrums.

Wear and tear on hearing goes with the territory, Mr. Pereira conceded. "I
tried wearing earplugs for a while," he said. "But it's weird. I can't do
it. I need to hear every nuance."

Mr. Pereira auditioned for the post of principal timpanist that opened when
Mr. Kohloff retired in 2004. He made it to the finals, and many colleagues
were rooting for him. The job went to someone else, who has not yet been
officially announced.

"I'm not disappointed," Mr. Pereira said. "I'm really happy with how I
played. The rest is not up to me."

Any disappointment is offset by Mr. Pereira's increasing satisfaction with
composing. Many of his Philharmonic colleagues have been enthusiastic about
his music. After he showed Philip Myers, the principal horn player, the
unperformed score to his Quintet for Winds, Mr. Myers liked the work so much
he programmed it on the chamber music series the Philharmonic presents at
Merkin Concert Hall. Performed in early 2005, it is a restless yet lucidly
textured work with a bracing and astringent harmonic language.

Mr. Pereira recently composed a suite for solo cello, modeled on the Bach
suites, where there was "no room for another voice" in the music, as he
writes in the introduction to the score. The work was given its premiere on
March 31 by the cellist for whom it was written, Jason Calloway, at HiArt!
in Chelsea. Alas, Mr. Pereira was playing in the Philharmonic that night.

This season Mr. Pereira has found another outlet for his musical energies.
Building on the success of its Young People's Concerts, the Philharmonic
introduced a series of Very Young People's Concerts, aimed at children from
3 to 5. And Mr. Pereira has evolved into the master of ceremonies and
principal educator for the concerts.

The final one this season took place on April 2 at Merkin Concert Hall,
before a noisily enthusiastic throng of children and their impressively
patient parents. The theme of the program was high and low. Mr. Pereira,
tall and easygoing, has the manner of a big kid. The youngsters in the
audience brightened when he walked out and said, "Hi, my name is Joe."

He then illustrated the topic of the day on his drum set. To produce low
tones he played rhythmic patterns on the bass drum and asked the children to
mimic the thudding sounds by slapping their hands on their laps. To produce
high tones he played the snare drum and had the children match the sounds by
clapping their hands. Then he played a game, quickly switching back and
forth from the bass to the snare drums, trying to trick the kids as they
slapped and clapped in sync.

At one point he placed six cowbells of different sizes onstage and asked six
young volunteers to come and help him arrange them in order from low to
high. He also introduced friends from the orchestra, who played, among other
short works, a movement from a Vivaldi concerto for that highest of all
instruments, the piccolo, and ‹ to demonstrate contrasts of high and low
registers ‹ Bottesini's Grand Duo for Violin and Double Bass.

Back when winning a position at the New York Philharmonic seemed a pipe
dream, Mr. Pereira never imagined that the job might involve teaching
delighted children about high and low. Now it seems an integral part of the
totality of his musical life, he explained backstage at Avery Fisher Hall,
as he tucked some handmade sticks into his closet, already stuffed with
mallets, cymbals and stacks of musical scores, with just enough space to
hang his tuxedo. 


The New York Philharmonic, with Mstislav Rostropovich conducting, will
perform Shostakovich's 10th Symphony and his First Violin Concerto, Maxim
Vengerov soloist, today at 2 p.m. and Saturday at 9 p.m. at Avery Fisher
Hall, (212) 875-5656.