Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

I recently took part in a photo shoot to help the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom team test their product. The results are posted on this Facebook direct link.

Feel free to vote on which headshot you like by posting a comment on this blog or adding it as a Facebook comment.

Michael Burritt came to Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota on October 10th. Concordia’s web-site had announced this clinic as being on October 3rd, but had to be rescheduled to the 10th. This change in schedule worked out great for me since I was now able to make the 3 hour drive “up north” to attend. For avid readers of this blog, Michael Burritt was also scheduled to attend last years’ Day of Percussion which had to be canceled due to flooding. You can read more about that with my earlier blog post.

I am familiar with Michael Burritt as an avid contributor to the Percussive Arts Society conventions (PASIC) as well as an author for the Percussive Notes magazine. I also had the opportunity to see him at PASIC 2001 perform the very advanced marimba solo “Escape Velocity 1.4″.

For part of the clinic he asked for a volunteer and I raised my hand. I think it was the very bright baseball jersey (American League All-Star Jersey of Minnesota Twins first baseman Justin Morneau from 2007) that caught his eye. He asked me to play some block C chords in my normal posture. Luckily I was having a good posture day and he said it looked comfortable. He then asked me to lean down over the instrument at the hips and play the chords again. I will admit that while standing over the marimba it wasn’t as easy to hear the difference, but the audience definitely could tell that my sound was more open and full when not leaning over the bars. Posture is important not only for long term health but also for the sound that you produce. Try this at home with a partner who is standing back away from the marimba and see if you can tell the difference.

Another highlight of the over two hour clinic, was a preview of a new composition of his called “Rounders” which is an advanced percussion ensemble piece available at MostlyMarimba.com. This piece is also required for the final round of the International Marimba Competition 2009 in Paris. Michael Burritt and Nancy Zeltsman are the two American jury members for this competition.

I went up to talk to Mr. Burritt after the clinic and asked if he could sign his composition “The Offering” for me, which he did.

Michael Burritt's "The Offering"

I also had this opportunity to pass on greetings from Tom Burritt. That interaction went something like this:

Jeff - “By the way, Tom says be sure to say ‘Hi Dad’ when I see you”.

Michael Burritt - “‘Hi Dad’? (laughs)”.

(Editor note - Michael Burritt and Thomas Burritt are actually cousins).

Thanks to Michael Burritt for making the trip to Minnesota, thanks to Dr. Eyler for making the clinic possible, and thanks to Zildjian for sponsoring the event and providing great door prizes!

The Samobor Music Festival will be held September 27th-30th in Samobor Croatia. This year as part of the festival there will be a marimba week featuring Ivana Bilic and Emmanuel Sejourne. The seminar is for “performers and teachers of all ages and nationalities”. You have the ability to register as an active or passive attendant depending on if you would like to perform in the masterclasses.

I had the opportunity to meet Ivana Bilic at the Zeltsman Marimba Festival this summer. Her performance of Steve Mackey’s “The Beast” was stunning and I hope continues to be part of her repertoire. Emmanuel Sejourne is the composer of “Katamiya” which was the recent piece that was learned for the Steve Weiss interactive music contest, as well as one of my favorite marimba pieces of all time “Nancy”.

Plan a trip to Croatia and join these two world class marimbists! For more information, visit their website.

I had a chance to have a chat with Nathan Daughtrey, Director of Operations of the Classical Marimba League, when here was here in Minnesota. This wasn’t a formal interview but I thought I would share the marimba related items we talked about.

The Classical Marimba League started about 3 years ago and was initially led by Mr. Dunnington. The marimba competition accepted CD submissions of the marimba performances this year. In future years, Nathan would like to require video submissions.

The three winners all flew into Minnesota to perform (one from Taiwan, the other two are persuing degrees here in the US). In the future Nathan would like to tie the competition concert into other events possibly including other Days of Percussion or PASIC.

Nathan has composed many works for percussion, I asked him about “The Yuletide Marimbist” which is a book of Christmas pieces arranged for marimba. A CD is also available for purchase. Nathan stated that he started these pieces as a intermediate level but the compositions ended up being a bit more advanced than that when they were finished.

I also asked Nathan about the Vic Firth Concert Podcast since that is one of my favorite marimba destinations on the Internet. He said the he is thrilled to contribute to that project and that this is a great way to provide free access to percussion literature performed at a high level instead of just a video camera of someone in their practice room. I couldn’t agree more and hope that this website continues to deliver high quality videos of percussion performances.

I realized I was taking pictures as part of the event but forgot to take one with Nathan. If you are interested, head over to Facebook and become a fan of the Classical Marimba League to see some photos.