drummers are musicians

I’m listening to a Michael Daugherty composition called UFO. Daugherty is a contemporary American composer and the piece was written for Evelyn Glennie, an astounding percussionist. (That’s Dame Evelyn Glennie to us.) I saw the BSO perform the piece last week at the opening concert of this season. Glennie played more percussion instruments than I even knew existed, thirty feet of the downstage area was taken up by the wide variety of her musical equipment. Her speed and precision seemed beyond human dexterity. Her musical mastery evinced total control and glorious passion.

During intermission I overheard one woman say to another “I wonder if it’s the same every night.” The clear implication, that percussion is always improvised, revealed a common misconception about musicians who play instruments you pound on. It felt so terribly ignorant a comment to hear at the symphony – I always hope that those people are generally more educated about music, but apparently not. How, I wondered, could it be a piece played by orchestra and soloist if it is not “the same every night”? Would she have thought that a violin concerto was improvised? A piano sonata played on the fly? It seemed a perfect example of that old boorish question: who hangs out with musicians? Drummers.