MARQUETTE, Mich. (WZMQ) – As part of the Northern Michigan University Music Department’s Summer Recital Series, percussion has made its way into the instrumental focus, looking to “Beat the Heat!” in this weeks edition.
Tuesday’s recital was hosted by Professor of Percussion, Dr. James Strain. The spotlight was on him and his fellow performers, as they played a number of original tunes for a large audience.
“It’s always great playing for people. I know that a lot of them are repeat attenders, and that’s really, really good,” said Strain. “There’s also several people where this might be their first exposure to some of this music, so they were kind of surprised, they didn’t know what to expect.”
The show featured percussionists from the Marquette Symphony Orchestra, each playing a solo piece, followed by various trios, quartets and a mallet quintet.
Strain says that performing comes easy. The difficult part about percussion, more than any performance anxiety, is putting all of the instruments away.
“It feels great today, and then tomorrow when I have to move all this stuff back, it’ll feel like ‘oh boy, I’m so glad it’s over, but now I got to really do the physical work of it,'” laughed Strain. “It’s a lot more mental when I’m just performing. It’s very enjoyable to perform too. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not stressful.”
Throughout this summer, the recitals have been very popular with the community. Strain says he hopes to see more of them in the future.
“I asked the audience to raise their hands if they’d been to one of the prior ones, we had three before this, and it looked like a vast majority of audience had been,” he said. “So, it’s something that we’d like to do.”
The final performance in the series will be hosted by Jazz Saxophonist Patrick Booth on July 29 at 5 p.m. in Reynolds Recital Hall.
