Seven students in the Meadows Percussion Ensemble will delight audiences with sounds in their fall concert in Caruth Auditorium this Wednesday at 8 p.m.
The concert will be under the direction of Jon Lee, the director of the Meadows Percussion Ensemble, as well as an adjunct lecturer at Meadows School of the Arts’ music program.
Wednesday’s performance features several famous works, including pieces by two Pullitzer-Prize winning composers, Christopher Rouse and Jennifer Higdon, as well as a piece by George Hamilton Green, an icon in percussion music.
“It has a wonderful variety of very high-quality pieces of music,” Lee, who has taught at SMU since 1995, said. “Every piece is radically different from the piece that comes before it.”
The second act of the show features Paul Lansky’s legendary 2005 composition, “Threads,” which Lee considers to be the anchor piece of the concert.
“All of the different sounds that percussion instruments are capable of you can get in this one piece,” Lee said about “Threads.” He explains that the sounds range from intense and brutal to soft and quiet; from angry and forceful to lush and beautiful.
In addition to using typical percussion instruments to produce sound, such as drums, marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, and more, Lee explains that in one movement in “Threads,” his musicians incorporate different melodic sounds found in items such as glass bottles and flowerpots. In another, they will use all metals. The show in general runs the gamut in terms of utilization of instruments.
“They’ll play it all,” Lee said.
Other features are Christopher Rouse’s “Ku-ka-llimoku,” an intense piece that is a sonic representation the Hawaiian god of war, and Jennifer Higdon’s “Splendid Wood,” a work for three rosewood marimbas.
In addition, Jamal Mohamed arranged a piece by Mahmoud Sharif called “Ya Hassan” that all the students will play together at the very end of the concert.
Three graduate students and four undergraduate students compose the overall percussion ensemble of seven members.
Although the percussion ensemble may be small, the seven percussionists are strong and passionate about what they do and hold their own on stage.
“It’s amazing with only seven members that we can perform a full concert show with intermission,” Lee said.
Lee gave his students the music for these pieces at the beginning of the semester, and the group has been working hard ever since. The percussion ensemble has one major show per semester and they also perform outside of SMU at local venues throughout the year.
Although every member of this year’s group is a music major, anyone at SMU has the opportunity to audition to be a part of this elite ensemble.
Before being accepted, auditioners are asked to play on various percussion instruments to show that they have the skills necessary to be in the talented group.
Lee explains that a few years ago, there was a pre-med major who was accepted to become a part of the percussion ensemble. This year, he says there is a piano major in the group.
“There’s a level of aptitude that [auditioners] need to bring that we expect because the performances are professional-level,” Lee said.
The concert is called “An Evening of Percussion,” but the possibilities are endless as to what the concert has in store for its audience.
“I would love for the university to come and see what’s happening in percussion here in Meadows. They’ll hear some sounds that I think that they’ll just find to be entrancing,” Lee said. “You’ll never hear the same thing twice.”
