Sixteen different drums played by four of the five members of Elon’s Percussion Ensemble opened the group’s spring concert last Wednesday with a loud roar and a tight groove.
The tribal drumming pulled in a few extra patrons who were walking by the open doors of Yeager Recital Hall as the concert began. The energy threw the concert into high momentum.
Led by alumna Mariana Poole, members of the group performed works on various keyboards, non-pitched percussion instruments and even a table.
Sophomore Brandon Mitchell and senior Michael Aneser, both music performance majors, performed works for solo marimba during the concert. Each played his piece by memory and was so intensely focused on the keys that the audience sat on the edges of their chairs, swaying with them.
The excitement for marimba was just beginning, though. Evan Small, assistant director of the Kernodle Center for Student Programs, and Poole performed a duet called "2+1" where Poole played the marimba upside down. Poole told the audience “2+1” had originally been composed with the difficulty of travelling with two marimbas in mind.
With the marimba faced vertically towards the audience, the two stood on opposite sides of the instrument. Mallets flew up and down in every direction. At points it looked as though the mallets were going to crash into each other, but Poole and Small worked together effortlessly to avoid collision.
In “Leaves Fell Playfully,” four performers played on two marimbas, this time both standing on the usual side. They listened to one another and moved through the music together as one.
While the pieces were short, the pace throughout the evening was engaging. The program never ceased to move. At one moment the audience was listening to a gentle roll of mallets against a marimba, and the next the room shook with the sound of giant toms and other assorted drums.
While a majority of the music was entertaining, together and well performed, some pieces came to the brink of falling apart. The performers did however cling to each groove just tight enough to sneak by the trouble areas.
Perhaps the greatest performance of the night was one that used very minimal equipment: four performers, each with a set of drums sticks and an elevated table.
The piece “Stick Insect” was originally written to be played on the floor while seated, said Poole, but the group struggled with that configuration. So, they tried playing on a table instead.
After having a laugh about it all, they were off. Sticks flew through the air as performers pounded rhythms onto the table and rotated playing on each other’s sticks without ever even looking up.
Images of a drum line were brought to mind and the audience rose to its feet almost immediately following the end of the piece. It was as if the concert could not have ended any other way.
While they may have stumbled to the end of a few pieces rather than dancing gracefully, the percussion ensemble showed what it was made of.