by Rick Mattingly

Former PAS President Gary Cook considers William Moersch to be one of the most highly respected pedagogues and internationally recognized performers in the percussion world. “I have followed his career since I was his first marimba teacher when he was a high school student in the early 1970s,” Cook said. “From his early-career teaching at Rutgers and John Hopkins and his performances around New York City and later internationally, to his over two-decades tenure at the University of Illinois, William Moersch has distinguished himself as a world-class educator, author, and performing artist. His impressive record of teaching, performances, international presentations, extensive commissions, collaborations, recordings, publications, service, and grantsmanship is second to none. Indeed, his c.v. is a ‘triple threat’ in academe and the most comprehensive in our music profession.

“His early efforts to codify marimba literature through New Music Marimba were visionary and a model for many collections by future pedagogues, and exemplary of his sustained scholarship and authorship. Likewise, his many commissioning projects have been models to enhancing and promoting our literature and profession more than any other artist I know. As a recipient of the PAS Lifetime Achievement in Education Award, and many other accolades, William has sustained himself beyond all expectations.”

Internationally renowned as a marimba virtuoso, chamber and symphonic percussionist, recording artist, and educator, William Moersch has appeared as soloist with symphony orchestras and in recital throughout North and South America, Europe, the Far East, and Australia. A regularly featured artist at international percussion festivals, he has performed on more than 75 recordings. In addition, he was the first marimbist ever to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Fellowship and has also been honored by NEA Recording and Consortium Commissioning grants. 

Moersch was a freelance musician in New York City for over two decades. He performed with the American Symphony, Metropolitan Opera, New Jersey Symphony, New York Chamber Symphony, New York City Opera, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, as a featured soloist in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Broadway production of The Pirates of Penzance, and on numerous motion-picture soundtracks. He is Principal Timpanist of Sinfonia da Camera and the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director of New Music Marimba.

In his letter supporting the nomination of Moersch to the PAS Hall of Fame, David Harvey wrote, “The vital status of the current marimba scene was forged by William Moersch fighting in the trenches of established musical traditions that did not recognize the marimba as a meaningful artistic vehicle. Over a period of almost a half century, William tirelessly developed marimba technique, marimba repertoire, marimba venues, marimba education, marimba history, and the marimba community. His string of well documented success in all of these arenas was the evolution of the marimba in the making. Mr. Moersch’s artistic success simply is the marimba’s success itself. In my opinion, the positive and meaningful impact of Mr. Moersch’s stellar percussive career is precisely why the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame exists.”

William Moersch began studying snare drum at his school while in 6th grade, and he also took private lessons. In high school, he also started playing vibraphone and marimba while studying with Edward J. Downing and Gary Cook. “In high school I was a shy, only child, and music gave me a way to express myself and have other people notice me,” Moersch said in an interview with Dr. Domenico E. Zarro. “At the end of my senior year in high school, I won two concerto competitions as a marimba soloist and decided, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life: be a marimba soloist with orchestras!’ Shortly thereafter, I learned that the entire marimba repertoire consisted of three concerti, a few etudes, and some transcriptions. I made a trial detour into jazz vibes, but then returned to solo marimba, percussion in chamber music, and orchestral percussion. I enjoyed playing in orchestras, but my primary interests were in solo marimba and contemporary music — now known as ‘new music’.” 

He studied percussion in college with Charles Owen and Barry Jekowsky, and he also took a year of class piano, a year of class jazz piano, and one semester of flute “I thought I would give music a try in college for a year and then transfer to an East Coast Conservatory,” he said. “As it turned out, Charles Owen retired from the Philadelphia Orchestra and started teaching at Michigan my freshman year, so I stayed there. Charles Owen had the greatest impact on me. Charlie gave me the Philadelphia Orchestra focus on sound, on rich, dark tone quality, and impeccable phrasing in every kind of music. At first, I went over the marimba concerti of Creston, Milhaud, and Kurka with him, but then became aware of Keiko Abe and started bringing the new Japanese literature to my lessons. Although Charlie had never played or heard those pieces, he always had helpful comments on the sound or on the phrasing.

“In one lesson, Charles Owen had said to me, ‘If you want to make a living in contemporary music, you’ll have to move to New York City.’ After initially thinking, ‘I’ll never move to New York,’ a year or two later, I did.”

Moersch soon formed the New York Quintet — a mixed chamber group of marimba, flute, clarinet, double bass, and percussion, modeled after Keiko Abe’s The Tokyo Quintet. “The experience of regularly rehearsing and performing chamber music with wind and string instruments provided the greatest musical growth period of my post-college life,” Moersch said. “Realizing the many different qualities of attack and of rhythm — that you could have rhythm without being metronomic — was a profound experience.”

He soon accepted a job that was offered to him by Arnie Lang at Brooklyn College, where Moersch taught a semester of weekly marimba master classes. He then accepted a part-time position at Rutgers as a result of the excellent reviews he received for his New York debut recital. William taught one day each week at Rutgers for 14 years. For the last five of those years, he also taught one day each week at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, primarily on marimba. While at Rutgers and Peabody, he created graduate degree programs in marimba performance. He then accepted a full-time position as Professor of Percussion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he taught from 1998–2024. He has also presented master classes throughout the world. In 2020, PAS recognized Moersch’s contributions with their Lifetime Achievement in Education Award.

Moersch has expressed his teaching philosophy as follows: “I bring to my teaching nearly 50 years of experience performing internationally as a soloist and with important orchestras and chamber ensembles across the globe. I have collaborated with musicians, dancers, actors, and composers in a variety of genres and performance venues. My primary responsibility as a teacher is to distill this experience and provide my students with the necessary skills, knowledge, and inspiration so that they may reach their full potential as musicians and teachers. Key to the student’s development is a mastery of the technical aspects of performance, an understanding of stylistic vocabulary and musical structure, a concept of sound quality, the ability to listen critically, and the capability to make intelligent artistic choices.”

Greg Giannascoli studied with William at Rutgers University. “His broad knowledge of the marimba repertoire is staggering,” Greg said. “While studying with William, I was exposed to, and very positively motivated to learn, a fantastic amount of solo, chamber, and concerto repertoire. Aside from the marimba, William is equally adept, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable about orchestral percussion, solo percussion, and percussion ensemble repertoire.”

Moersch cited passing on to students the concept of sound he got from Charles Owen and the idea of musical phrasing — of shaping a line with touch and breathing. “Sing everything you play and pay attention to how you are using your voice, then get the same sound from the instrument,” Moersch explained. “I have also emphasized that every percussionist has a responsibility to add to the repertoire. The most important things I strive to pass on to my students are to be as versatile as possible, be prepared for any opportunity you are offered, and be able to create opportunities for yourself.”

In terms of contributing to the repertoire, Moersch has led by example, commissioning much of the prominent modern repertoire for marimba. “When I finished college and first moved to New York, the composers among my personal circle of classmates were delighted to write a piece in exchange for a guaranteed performance,” Moersch wrote in a 1999 Percussive Notes article. “Many of the first works written for the New York Quintet came about in this manner. As I began to meet professional composers through my performing and social activities, my scope expanded. Following the success of Irwin Bazelon’s ‘Partnership’ for timpani and marimba, commissioned and premiered by Jonathan Haas and myself, I used personal funds to commission Bazelon’s ‘Suite for Marimba.’ At the premiere of the ‘Suite,’ I met Richard Rodney Bennett, a friend of Bazelon’s who expressed an interest in writing a piece for my upcoming New York debut recital. The result was ‘After Syrinx II,’ along with an offer of a concerto in the future. 

“Following the success of my debut recital, I was inspired to move to a new level both of composers and funding. In 1980, the National Endowment for the Arts originated the Consortium Commissioning program. The concept was to form a consortium of three performers to commission a new work, with each performer committing to a minimum of three performances. This provided nine guaranteed performances under a single commissioning grant. In the summer of 1984, I organized and authored an NEA Consortium Commissioning grant with Gordon Stout, Leigh Stevens, and PAS that resulted in Jacob Druckman’s ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water,’ Roger Reynolds’s ‘Islands from Archipelago II: Autumn Island’ and, eventually, Joseph Schwantner’s ‘Velocities.’ At the same time, several other new pieces, including Andrew Thomas’s ‘Merlin’ and Eric Ewazen’s ‘Northern Lights,’ developed out of my friendships and professional contacts in New York. 

Nancy Zeltsman attended that concert with Moersch, Stout, and Stevens. “William performed the world premiere of ‘Reflections on the Nature of Water’ and a very early performance of ‘Merlin’,” she recalls. “Those two pieces thoroughly blew my mind! I recall leaving that concert thinking, ‘Well, that just changed EVERYTHING’.”

Soon after, William realized the necessity of not-for-profit status for commissioning projects. “In 1986 I founded New Music Marimba, Inc.,” he said. “This enabled me to raise funds through private, tax-deductible contributions, as well as to apply for grants directly rather than through ‘umbrella’ corporations. New Music Marimba’s first commission was for Richard Rodney Bennett’s ‘Concerto for Marimba and Chamber Orchestra,’ followed two years later by Andrew Thomas’s ‘Loving Mad Tom: Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra’.”

According to Alan Zimmerman, “I think the commissioning efforts of New Music Marimba will be William’s most lasting legacy. As the Artistic Director and Founder of New Music Marimba, William guided our organization to many successes. The crowning achievement of NMM was the large-scale orchestral consortium commissioning of Libby Larsen’s ‘Marimba Concerto: After Hampton.’ A dozen orchestras including in San Antonio, Erie, Long Beach, and New Orleans joined the project.”

In the meantime, Moersch and Zeltsman became friends. “We collaborated on a commissioning project around 1991 with Robert van Sice — pieces we premiered in 1993,” Zeltsman said. “Two that came out of that were Steven Mackey’s ‘See Ya Thursday’ and Gunther Schuller’s ‘Marimbology.’ William premiered Steve’s piece; I premiered Gunther’s. I began to feel grounded in something of a ‘marimba community’ by getting to know William and collaborating with him. I admire his knowledge of marimba history and his commissioning efforts. I’m grateful that William was a guest faculty member at a couple of Zeltsman Marimba Festivals, and he was one of the performers who premiered and recorded three of the Intermediate Masterworks for Marimba solos. We’ve continued to have a warm, professional friendship through many years.”

According to The Times of London, U.K., “A surprising array of contemporary music awaits any musicians who take up the marimba as their solo instrument. There will be no need for transcriptions when the choice of original compositions extends to substantial solos by such figures as Richard Rodney Bennett or Jacob Druckman. For this, gratitude should go to the American marimba player William Moersch, who has built up the repertoire by commissioning new pieces.

To date, he has commissioned 121 works — mainly for marimba in a variety of settings — from composers including Irwin Bazelon, Richard Rodney Bennett, Martin Bresnick, Jacob Druckman, Eric Ewazen, David Lang, Paul Lansky, Libby Larsen, Steven Mackey, Akemi Naito, Roger Reynolds, Gunther Schuller, Joseph Schwantner, John Serry, Andrew Thomas, Alejandro Viñao, James Wood, and Charles Wuorinen.

William has been involved with the Percussive Arts Society for many years. He has served on several committees, including the Pedagogy and Keyboard committees, and he has also served on the Board of Directors and the Board of Advisors. Moersch has presented clinics and concerts at PASIC and adjudicated many PASIC competitions, and he has contributed articles to Percussive Notes.

Asked by Dr. Domenico E. Zarro how he would define a good musician and a good teacher, Moersch replied, “A good musician listens and responds to the other musicians’ playing, leading when necessary, supporting when necessary. A good teacher does the same thing with each student. My life experience has changed the focus from the individual to the collective; it’s not so much what you alone are capable of, but how you can interact cooperatively with others.”

Moersch added, “This also mirrors my personal evolution from a soloist to a chamber and orchestral musician. Experiencing music through the marimba, especially in chamber music, made me a better musician. That musical growth enabled me to more fully understand the function and potential of timpani in the orchestra. The move from New York to Illinois then gave me the opportunity to discover that I love playing timpani in an orchestra as much as I enjoyed playing marimba in front of the orchestra. Although I’ve retired from teaching, I look forward to performing both as an orchestral timpanist and as a marimbist in chamber music for many years to come.”