Awe, Struck
Under the guidance of Chris Norton, Belmont’s student Percussion Ensemble create music of astounding grace and precision
by Marcel Smith
Belmont Percussion Ensemble
7:30 p.m. April 7 at Massey Concert Hall, Belmont University
Call 460-6408 for information
Music is an ancient and radical metaphor for how human cultures thrive and transform. Any kind of music may serve as exemplar, but none perhaps better than percussion—thanks to both its utter simplicity and its potential for infinite complexity. Plainly put, percussion is what happens anytime somebody hits one thing with another. But the possibilities are virtually limitless, even without the sophistications of the piano and the vibraphone. And when somebody recognizes that anything that can be whacked or scraped or shaken is an instrument, then glass bottles, tin cans, pie pans, tabletops and discarded automobile brake drums find new jobs.
Percussion instruments have existed for millennia. But in the Western tradition, as recently as half a century ago, they belonged largely in marching bands and the back rows of orchestras. Jazz helped to change that, as did the emergence of percussion ensembles at music schools. But arguably the galvanizing metamorphosis came in 1971, when five percussionists calling themselves NEXUS gave their first performance. In the years since, they’ve enriched the Western mainstream with sonorities and rhythms from all over the world. And thanks to Nexus, today’s typical percussionist will play more than one instrument—often at once.
The characteristic percussive sound has a sharp, clean beginning and a short duration; commonly, scores have percussionists playing pages and pages of very fast 16th- and 32nd-notes in multiple meters. The resulting fabric is a texture of strung staccato beads. Precision is essential, or else the elaborate pattern turns into a bowl of BBs. And when precision is married to intelligent and passionate musicianship, the result can take the breath away. Belmont University professor Christopher Norton and his student ensemble celebrate that marriage.
Norton is himself an astonishing virtuoso musician. Equally astonishing is his ability to get virtuoso music out of 14 men and women in their late teens and early 20s, all but five of them undergraduates. Though what he has them playing is technically very demanding, they play it with confident, artful grace, so that both what they play and how they play it says something important about music’s place in human lives.
Directing them, Norton is perfectly at ease. His gestures and his body language are understated, precise instructions, grounded on an ear that’s the keenest I’ve ever encountered. If a 32nd note is not played, or played with mistaken emphasis, he hears it and promptly corrects it. Even his students marvel at his acuity; their confidence in themselves derives from their confidence in him.
The Belmont Percussion Ensemble’s performance this Monday at the school’s Massey Concert Hall is an academic requirement other students are obliged to attend, but it promises to be a rare feast for any music fan. The program opens with a march for two pairs of kettle drums, premiered by composers André and Jacques Philidor for King Louis XIV at Versailles. The concert concludes with “Bonham,” composed by Christopher Rouse in 1988 for eight percussionists. Based on a drum riff by the late John Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin, this wild ride includes a bravura solo for drum set, to be delivered by undergrad Stuart McKenzie.
Between les Philidor and Rouse comes a diverse buffet. In Thierry de Mey’s 1992 piece “Musiques de table,” three percussionists each play a tabletop with their hands and fingers, in a performance meant to marry visual to aural. “Stained Glass,” by David Gillingham (b. 1947), evokes impressions of stained-glass windows, the final segment featuring small tuned brass disks called crotales that deliver pure crystalline sounds. “The Doomsday Machine,” named for a Star Trek episode, “explores a multitude of wood, metal and membraned sounds in an explosively energetic dance,” according to composer Michael Burritt, who wrote the piece in 2000.
There are other selections as well, all delightfully sophisticated stuff, delivered by young musicians masterfully prepared and directed. For Norton and his players, this week’s performance will have special significance: They dedicate it to the memory of Jonathan Phillips, a former ensemble member killed last February in a car crash.
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