PASIC 2013 – Thursday Recap

My morning started off with a visit to the exhibits. I can’t imagine a PASIC without a trip to the exhibits and the Steve Weiss booth. After a quick visit to the booths, I went to see the Michigan State Percussion Ensemble. They preformed the entire program from memory including Rain Tree and Xenakis’ Peaux. (For a complete listing of all of the College Percussion Concerts, check out the post I wrote on DrumChattr.com). After this performance I attended a Brazilian clinic by Marcos Santos and Grooversity. He introduced Brazilian rhythms to the audience in a super high energy presentation. It was interesting to hear some of the early Candomblé rhythms and how they evolved into Samba. One of my student’s from CSULB got to perform on this clinic. (Photos below). For more information about Marcos’ clinic, check out his handout here.

Most of the afternoon was spent in the exhibits. It was great to catch up with friends, meet new people, and visit my endorsers. One of the highlights was Remo’s new mesh drum head. It feels like a drum head but has little to no sound. It is similar to what is used on the Roland electronic drum kits. I am interested in seeing how they hold up in a university practice room setting. I will report back once I get a set. I had the opportunity to meet Remo Belli, founder of Remo Drum Heads, as well as check out some of the new drums. (I have posted some photos below). Brad Dutz, one of my colleagues at BCCM, was demonstrating the new HandSonic by Roland. These electronic hand percussion instruments have sure come a long way and the new unit is smaller and has an external USB port to bring in more sounds.

Thursday has become New Music Day and there are numerous performances throughout the day. Dr. Eugene Novotney and the New Music Committee has done a great job curating the selections and I look forward to future focus days. I wasn’t able to attend many of the performances, but I heard a lot of great things about the Mark Applebaum concert. Unfortunately, it is impossible to attend everything at PASIC. I did sat in on the Percussion Ensemble Reading Session and got some great ideas for future programming. The list is included in the link above. For dinner, I had a chance to sit down with Tom Burritt and Thom Hasenpflug. It is always great to catch up with friends and I was especially interested I picking their brain about the job opening at CSULB. They gave me a lot of information to think about.

The evening concert was Maraca2, a British percussion duo. They played a high energy program and one of my highlights was the new piece that was commissioned from Casey Cangolisi. After the concert was the first annual DrumChattr PASIC hang at Scotty’s. It was fun to meet new people and hang out with DrumChattr friends. Thanks to everyone who came out for the hang. See you next year.