Author: John

by Rick Mattingly It is especially appropriate that Tom Siwe be elected to the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame during the year that PAS celebrates its 50th anniversary, as Siwe played a large role in that history and his influence continues to be felt. Siwe was first elected to the PAS Board of Directors…

by Lauren Vogel Weiss Dick Schory is more than a percussionist. He is also acomposer, arranger, conductor, music publisher, record and television producer,audio pioneer, and music industry veteran responsible for instrument design and marketing. But perhaps one of the most telling facts about his impressive musical career is that nine members of the PAS Hall…

by Rick Mattingly If the only album Jimmy Cobb ever played on had been Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, he would have earned his place in jazz history. “The first time I heard Jimmy was on Kind of Blue,” said PAS Hall of Fame member Jack DeJohnette, “and what got my attention was his touch…

by Lauren Vogel Weiss Last June’s Santa Fe Marimba Festival had been planned long before Gordon Stout was selected to be in the PAS Hall of Fame, but it became a celebration of one of the marimba’s most well-known and influential artists. Among the performers at the New Mexico event were Kevin Bobo, Valerie Naranjo,…

by Mark Griffith Very few drummers throughout history have a signature timekeeping approach associated with their name. I am not referring to licks or a singular beat they played. I am referring to an instantly identifiable concept to playing a time feel. Elvin Jones’s wide and loping swing, Art Blakey’s insistent shuffle infused swing, and…

The average music fan may not know his name, but it’s safe to assume that anyone who has listened to popular music over the past 50 years has heard Hal Blaine play drums. Even though the bulk of his studio work was done in the 1960s and ’70s, many of those recordings have become timeless…

by B. Michael Williams Renaissance man n: a person who has wide interests and is expert in several areas. Nowadays, terms can be so overused as to be rendered totally useless in describing aspects of quality in a person or work. Think of awesome. A perfectly good term that once meant “inspiring of fearful reverence,”…

by Jeannine Remy Clifford Alexis has come to represent quality and innovation for steelpan builders, tuners, educators, performers, and aficionados. He is known the world over as a steelpan builder/tuner of the highest echelon, a skilled performer, a creative composer and arranger, and one with a natural ability to teach and inspire students from all…

by Rick Mattingly Ask those who have studied with Sal Rabbio, or ever heard him play, what struck them the most about the longtime Detroit Symphony Orchestra timpanist, and they will likely cite Rabbio’s sound. Rabbio himself considers sound the most important facet of being a musician. Every player should have a concept of what…

by Lauren Vogel Weiss This is the story of a young boy from a very small school in the Midwest who fell in love with music, especially percussion, and went on to become a teacher for nearly four decades, sharing his passion for music. This passion spread to a then-fledging organization called the Percussive Arts…