Hall of Fame

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…

by Mark Griffith There are many compliments you can give a musician: musicality, taste, creativity, the ability to make everyone around you sound better. Harold Jones personifies all of those characteristics. But longevity is possibly the highest accolade one can give a musician, and Harold has that, too.  Jones played on one of the first…

by N. Scott Robinson The achievements of Glen Velez have significantly advanced the art of percussion in several ways. Beginning in the late-1970s, his single-handed development of a global approach to modern frame drumming in the USA involved the mastery of diverse hand drumming techniques from South Indian, Central Asian, Arab, Persian, Brazilian, and Italian…

by Lauren Vogel Weiss “Nice” can be defined as something—or someone—pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory, kind, polite, and/or respectable. It can be a one-word summary of a musical experience featuring great precision or sensitive discernment. And when asked how he would like to be remembered, it is one of the words that 2014 PAS Hall of Fame…

by Rick Mattingly Art Blakey’s stated goal was to be a great drummer. “But,” he told writer Chip Stern in a 1984 Modern Drummer cover story, “just in the sense of having musicians want to play with me—not to be better than Buddy Rich or to compete with someone. I will not compete that way;…

Marimba Masters/Vibraphone Virtuosos By Lauren Vogel Weiss You find your seat in the theater and look at the stage: nearly empty except for one vibraphone and one marimba, facing each other, shining in the spotlights. This event could be a college recital or a professional concert, as the pairing of these two keyboard percussion instruments…