Percussionists bring out the hits at spring recital

The W. E. Singleton Center’s Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall walls rang with vibrant tones of competent melody at Wednesday night’s Percussion Studio Recital.

This particular recital was used to display percussion instruments, such as the marimba, a xylophone-type instrument.

For the past three years, the Percussion Studio Recital has been a great way for students to show off their individual talents.

“Each student gets to play a solo to show their individual strengths,” senior Ian Browning said.

His piece, “Mambwaltzo,” trembled the audience as it made its debut at the recital.

In preparation for the show, many of the performers spent months on songs that only took five minutes to play.

“We work them out in private lessons, and hopefully they let us play,” said music education major Derek Rower. “Some people don’t get to [perform] – depends if we make it or not.”

Rower practiced John Beck’s “Solo No. 11,” a song written for timpani, a month prior to the recital, which he performed as a solo piece.

“They’re here as much as we (the teachers) are, and you have to be in today’s world,” adjunct instructor Mike Boyd said of the effort the musicians put into practicing.

Freshman Kevin Estes geared up three and a half months ahead of time for the two pieces he played on the marimbas.

He performed the Gordon Stout movement, “October Night,” on the marimbas as a solo performance.

Kistopher Keeton is finishing his first year as a percussion instructor at VCU, after transferring from Northwestern University, and thus far he has been astonished at the level of which his students are performing.

“The show had a lot of diversity,” Keeton said, referring to the wide array of music displayed at the recital.

“That is one of the things we have to offer in the percussion program.”