Hill Hall and Kenan Music Building will come alive with the rhythmic sounds of drums, xylophones and marimbas for the Day of Percussion Saturday.
Percussionists of all levels from around the state will gather on campus for a day-long festival of master classes, clinics and concerts. The North Carolina Chapter of the Percussive Arts Society is sponsoring the event.
Catch some beats
Time: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday
Location: Hill Hall Auditorium
Info: www.events.unc.edu
Tracy Wiggins, president of the chapter and director of percussion studies at UNC-Pembroke, said the Day of Percussion is held annually at various venues throughout the state.
“The purpose of it is to just give percussionists a day to come together to play, see new ideas, hear performances from the different groups from around the state,” Wiggins said.
Juan Alamo, a UNC-CH percussion professor and organizer of the festival, invited internationally-known artists, as well as faculty and colleagues who are well-known in the percussion community, to host clinics and perform.
“There are a lot of areas of percussion that the Chapel Hill community hasn’t been as exposed to, so I’m trying to bring those,” Alamo said.
“I think it will be a great event for the community to get exposed to all these different instruments and new styles of music.”
Alamo said that two or three events will be happening simultaneously throughout the day, providing participants with various sessions and concerts to choose from.
Dan Davis, a UNC-CH jazz drumset professor, will be playing the drums with a jazz organ trio, which also includes a Hammond B-3 organ and electric guitar.
“We’ll play about a few songs, and in between, I will probably ask and answer a couple of questions regarding the whole organ trio format that we’re playing in and give a little history of that,” Davis said.
“I will probably demonstrate a few different grooves and ask the other players to demonstrate some different things, so it will have a bit of an educational value to it in addition to it being a music performance.”
Neeraj Mehta, visiting professor of percussion at UNC-Greensboro, will present a performance clinic about a sub-genre of contemporary percussion called multi-percussion.
“What that means is bringing many different percussion instruments together into unified setups that one performer will play,” Mehta said.
The festival will be Mehta’s first Day of Percussion in North Carolina, but he has participated in the event in other states.
“It’s a great opportunity for participants to observe, get up-close with the artists and presenters to see all of this and really do some in-depth learning.”
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