Vol. 3, No. 1, February 2016 CYNTHIA YEH CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA STEWART COPELAND JAZZ VIBRAPHONE PEDAGOGY DANI MARKHAM: CREATING HER OWN PATH FEBRUARY 2016 2 RHYTHM! SCENE TM RHYTHM! SCENE R!S STAFF Megan Arns Rhythm! Scene Editor Rick Mattingly, Senior Editor Hillary Henry Publications Production Manager Marianella Moreno Publishing and Cover Photo by Digital Media Operations Todd Rosenberg Photography R!S ADVERTISING FEATURES Staci Stokes-Waites [email protected] Cynthia Yeh: Demanding Excellence by Megan Arns PAS BOARD OF Dani Markham: Creating Her Own Path by Melinda A. Leoce DIRECTORS Dr. Julie Hill President Hearing the Place: Audience Environmental Awareness at “Inuksuit” by Rebecca Dr. Brian Zator President-Elect McDaniel George Barrett First Vice President Dr. Paul Buyer Second Vice President Jazz Vibraphone Pedagogy: Ask the Masters by Tyler Tolles Dr. Chris Hanning Secretary Career Alternatives in Percussion by Haley Nutt John R. Beck Immediate Past President Michael Kenyon PASIC 2015 Video Recap compiled by Dan Ainspan and Keylee Fletcher-Levy Karl Leffler Jim Rupp Stewart Copeland: Symphonic Composer and Orchestral Soloist by Lauren Vogel Weiss David Steele 17 Ways University Percussionists Can Save Money by the PAS University Committee Mark Stempel Jeffrey Hartsough Executive Director Hot Licks: Moving Rolls by Kirby Jacobsen Improving Sampler Response to an Electronic Drumkit by Chris Roode CONTACT PAS 110 W. Washington Street, Suite A, JEN 2016 Highlights by Rick Mattingly Indianapolis, IN 46204 Telephone: (317) 974-4488 The Composition Process: A Step-by-Step Guide from a Percussionist’s View Fax: (317) 974-4499 by Jamie Wind Whitmarsh E-mail: [email protected] R!Solo: Whispers for Snare Drum by Timothy A. Corpus Web: www.pas.org R!S Columns The Percussive Arts Society BECOME A PAS SUBSCRIBER (PAS) Mission Statement: To inspire, educate, Rhythm! Scene is published six times a year: February, April, June, August, and support percussionists October and December by the Percussive Arts Society. and drummers COPYRIGHT © 2016 by the Percussive Arts Society, Inc. Reproduction of any part of this publication without permission from PAS is prohibited by law. throughout the world. CYNTHIA YEH: DEMANDING EXCELLENCE BY MEGAN ARNS hether forcefully striking two bass drums in Verdi’s Tap to play Video W“Requiem,” rhythmically driving the orchestra in Ravel’s “Bolero,” or flying though a challenging xylophone part in Ger- shwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” Cynthia Yeh has it all under control. Now in her ninth season as Principal Percussionist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), Cynthia performs over 120 concerts a year in Symphony Center, plays a wealth of chamber music with MusicNOW, and has recently been featured as a soloist with the CSO and soon with the Chicago Sinfonietta. She might look small, but she is a woman with a powerful sound and a strong purpose. CHOOSING A PATH Like many young students, Cynthia didn’t take a one-way road to her career choice. She was born in Taiwan, moved to Video by Todd Rosenberg. Editing by Media Process Group. Canada with her family at age 10, and stayed in Vancouver to attend the University of British Columbia. Her first year of When faced with the difficult decision of choosing music undergraduate studies was in Business/Commerce, her second or business, Cynthia said, “I decided I could always go back to in Piano Performance, and she switched to Percussion Perfor- school for commerce or business, but I couldn’t just take four mance for her third and fourth years. years off music and go back.” “I didn’t think I was going to be a musician because I want- Cynthia played percussion in high school, so she decided ed to wear pencil skirts and power suits, and deal with mon- to take percussion ensemble because she thought it would be ey,” Cynthia said. “But I had been studying piano since I was a “super easy credit.” As it turns out, percussion was not “super four years old, and I really missed playing piano when I got to easy” in college, and it piqued her interest: “Oh, this is kind of college. I was still taking lessons, but it was difficult to balance cool!” she remembers thinking. She began taking percussion with a business degree.” lessons and practicing a lot, which concerned her piano teach- er. She recalled him saying, “Cynthia, you have to decide. You can’t have both!” Just as she had to choose between music and business, Cynthia again was faced with a difficult decision of choosing between piano and percussion. Fortunately for the percussion community, Cynthia chose percussion! After graduating from UBC, she went to Temple University for graduate school to study with legendary Philadel- phia Orchestra percussionist Alan Abel. She stayed in the area for a few years as a freelancer before securing a job as Principal Percussionist of the San Diego Symphony in 2004. In 2006, she Todd Rosenberg Photography Rosenberg Todd Todd Rosenberg Photography Rosenberg Todd FEBRUARY 2016 4 RHYTHM! SCENE won the position of Principal Percussionist of the Chicago Sym- phony Orchestra and officially started in 2007. “And I’ve been in Chicago ever since!” Cynthia said. Photography Rosenberg Todd PERFORMING WITH THE CSO The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is consistently hailed as one of today’s lead- ing orchestras and is currently celebrating its 125th anniversary season. It annually performs Photography Rosenberg Todd the heels down to the middle stud. I was shocked! I know I’m a over 150 concerts locally, loud and hard walker, but still!” nationally, and abroad. Part of being the principal percussionist of an orchestra There are benefits to comes with logistical duties such as figuring out who plays this, Cynthia said. “We what part and deciding how the instruments will be arranged play so many concerts, onstage to facilitate minimal shifting. Cynthia assures that this so I am able to really gets easier with time. “Now I can get a whole season of part as- get comfortable with signments done, minus the movie nights, in two hours, where the music. When you’re it used to take me days and weeks,” she said. She also creates cranking out ‘Bolero’ and stage diagrams directly on her phone to send to the stage crew, ‘Scheherazade’ every where she used to hand-draw them. night, you end up feeling Cynthia recently returned home to Chicago from the CSO very comfortable with a Asia Tour, where they visited Taipei, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, lot of the standard rep.” and Seoul throughout January. They played a series of 10 con- According to Cynthia, certs including Tchaikovsky 4 and Mahler 1 led by conductor another way to gauge and music director Riccardo Muti. Up next, on February 5–6 at the amount of concerts Symphony Center is Shostakovich Symphonies 1 and 15 with played is by your shoes. Russian conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. “I’m really looking “I have this one pair forward to the Shostakovich symphonies because they’re really of concert shoes that I fun pieces for percussionists to play,” Cynthia said. bought for the finals of the audition in 2006. It’s CONCERTI AND CHAMBER MUSIC a pair of black patent When you’re used to performing in the back, standing in leather kitten heels, and front of the CSO is quite a different experience. “I honestly they became my primary did not realize how loud the Chicago Symphony string section concert shoes. Those was!” Cynthia said, reflecting on her 2014 performance as so- shoes only ever see from loist in “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel,” a percussion concerto written the dressing room to the in 1992 by Scottish composer James MacMillan. The concerto is stage, and by the end of written in one continuous movement, lasting about 25 min- season two I had worn utes, and is based on a 15th-century French Advent plain- Todd Rosenberg Photography Rosenberg Todd RHYTHM! SCENE 5 FEBRUARY 2016 Tap to play Video Megan Arns is an Assistant Teach- ing Professor of Percussion at the University of Missouri. Active as a contemporary chamber percussionist, she regularly performs with three contemporary chamber groups: the [Switch~Ensemble] in residence at the Eastman Computer Music Center, What is Noise from Florida State Uni- versity, and her saxophone/percus- sion duo, DRAX, at the University of Missouri with Leo Saguiguit. She is a candidate for a D.M.A. in Percussion Performance & Literature and the editor of Rhythm! Scene. R!S Video provided courtesy of the Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. chant. The percussionist plays about 25 different instruments including marimba, log drum, congas, and gongs. In addition to performances with the CSO, Cynthia also performed the work in Mexico City with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional. Both performances were under the baton of Carlos Miguel Prieto. “Concerti are a lot of fun to do. I had never performed one until quite recently,” Cynthia said. She will also perform Jen- nifer Higdon’s Grammy-Award winning “Percussion Concerto” with the Chicago Sinfonietta this March, conducted by music director Mei-Ann Chen. “It’s nice to get a couple of plays out of a piece you put so much work into,” Cynthia said. “Mei-Ann Chen and I will also perform Higdon’s concerto with the na- tional orchestra of Taiwan in November.” Also on her upcoming schedule are chamber music performances with MusicNOW in May and on the CSO chamber series in June. HOBBIES AND ADVICE When she’s not rehearsing at Symphony Center or per- forming on a CSO international tour, Cynthia likes to cook, eat, exercise, and play with her cats. “I work out a lot,” she said. “I’ve been addicted to Pure Barre, which is an awesome work- out.