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Appalachian State University Percussion Ensemble
The Appalachian State University Percussion Program, part of the Hayes School of Music, is comprised of over thirty students studying in the areas of Music Education, Music Performance, Music Therapy, Sacred Music, Composition and Theory, Music Industry Studies, Jazz Studies, and Graduate Music Studies. The percussion students have the opportunity to participate in both conducted and un-conducted percussion chamber music, Afro-Cuban and Brazilian music, Balinese gamelan, and one of the country’s oldest steel pan programs. The percussion ensembles are dedicated to performing both the core repertoire of the percussion world as well as cutting-edge and commissioned repertoire. The percussion students and ensembles have performed nationally and internationally, including at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and have worked with guest artists such as Sandbox Percussion, Jake Nissly, Jonathan Scales, and more.
(Title TBD): A New Work for Old Granddad
New Music/Research
New Music/Research PresentsLive
This performance will be of a new work for Lou Harrison's American Gamelan, which he called "Old Granddad". The work, by composer Roger Zare, has yet to be titled. It will be performed on Old Granddad #4, one of only four extant copies of these instruments in existence. The gamelan is comprised of metal pipes and slabs in an individualized intonation scheme.
Harrison designed them with his partner as a way to play complex percussion music in just intonation. He also built them as a way to play Korean and Chinese music in chamber ensembles with his SF Bay-area friends during the 1960s and 1970s. The instruments also allude to the sonic practices of Javanese court gamelan.
This is the epitome of an individualized practice—drawing inspiration from disparate sources like Harry Partch, Indonesian and Korean music, and 12-tone transformational techniques—to create Harrison’s own unique instrumental medium, which we are now using to create new art.
