PAS Hall of Fame member and longtime Chicago Symphony Orchestra percussionist Al Payson died on June 23, 2024.

Albert Eugene Pisoni was born January 15, 1934 in Springfield, Illinois. The family changed their name to Payson when Al was in grade school. When Al was five years old, he started taking private drum lessons from the grade school band teacher. Al was double-promoted in grade school twice so he started high school at age 12. He was in the school band all four years, and during high school he decided to pursue a career in music. 

Al attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale for one year, and then transferred to the University of Illinois, Champaign, which had a well-known percussion program under the direction of Paul Price. Al attended one semester, and when Al was 16, he joined the 44th Infantry Division of the Illinois National Guard, which had a band that Al played in.

When the Korean war ended in 1953, Al returned to the University of Illinois. After graduating with a B.M. degree in Applied Percussion, Al became a member of the Louisville Orchestra. After one season there, he played with the Lyric Opera of Chicago for one season.

In 1958, the music director of the CSO, Fritz Reiner, hired Al without Al having to audition. Al’s career with the CSO spanned 40 years, from 1958 to 1997, as a section percussionist. The majority of his years were spent under the baton of Sir Georg Solti. The CSO made numerous recordings during Al’s 40 years. An especially notable recording was when Al played the snare drum for Ravel’s “Bolero.” That recording won a Grammy Award in 1977 for Best Classical Orchestral Performance. During Al’s 40 years with the CSO, they won 54 Grammy awards.

The CSO had a program that sent its musicians to Chicago-area schools to teach students about the different instruments. Al did this with other CSO percussionists for 30 years, visiting about 300 schools. Al formed his own group called The Chicago Percussion Ensemble with his percussionist wife, Gerry, and two other percussionists. They traveled to Chicago suburban schools giving percussion presentations to grade-school-aged children for approximately 20 years, visiting more than 200 schools.

Al taught at the collegiate level for almost 50 years starting at DePaul University in Chicago in 1963. He also taught at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois for four years. In 1992 he went back to DePaul part-time after he retired from the CSO. At the end of every school year, Al would invite his students to his home for a barbecue. 

Payson also wrote several instructional books, including The Snare Drum in the Concert Hall, Music Educators’ Guide to Percussion (co-written with Jack McKenzie), Percussion in the School Music Program, Duets for Marimba, Elementary Marimba and Xylophone Method, Quick Start Timpani Method, Techniques of Playing Bass Drum, Cymbals and Accessories, and others. He also composed “Die Zwitschermaschine” (“The Twittering Machine”), a multi-percussion solo piece based on a painting by Paul Klee.

He also served as an inventor and started Payson Percussion Products to manufacture his inventions, which included timpani mallets with aluminum shafts and vinyl grips. bass drum beaters, RotoToms (manufactured and sold by Remo), gong beaters, Jonesie stick totes (developed with Count Basie drummer Harold Jones), timpani mutes, and drumset bass drum mutes.

The University of Illinois School of Music presented Payson with the Distinguished Service Award in 1994, and he was inducted into the PAS Hall of Fame in 2001.

When Payson died, his former CSO colleague James Ross posted that Al “was just a wonderful person and probably, from a personal point of view, the main reason I made it through my first couple of years with Chicago Symphony. He was always the voice of calm and reason. His professional life as a player, teacher, inventor, and author is well known. We have lost one of the true giants in our profession and a truly remarkable and kind human being. May he rest in peace.”