I’m very sorry to report that the NAFDA South event in the Atlanta area scheduled for September 12 has been cancelled. The NAFDA leadership made a valiant effort, but as the date drew closer there were too few pre-registered participants. My understanding is that they will go back to the drawing board and look into other possible dates/venues in the near future. Stay tuned!

BMW

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Dear Friends,

This is a terrific opportunity to immerse yourself in frame drumming for a day in the Atlanta area September 12. You get five workshops with notable frame drum experts plus an evening concert for just $100! I think it’s a great deal. My students and I will be there performing some new works in the evening concert. Check us out on YouTube here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/bmichaelwilliams

To reserve a spot at NAFDA South, send email to nafda1@gmail.com or visit www.nafda1.com/nafdasouth.php.

Hope to see you there!

BMW

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NSR with BMW and Winthrop percussion students

We had a great time with N. Scott Robinson at Winthrop during the first week of April, 2009. Students had an opportunity to study with Scott privately and in group sessions on all types of frame drums including tar, riq, bodhran, and kanjira. His handouts on technical development (which we understand will soon be part of his new book) were very helpful. Scott does a fantastic job communicating with students in a clinic setting. As part of his residency, he also presented a PowerPoint slide presentation titled “The New Percussionist.” You can find more information about this terrific presentation at www.nscottrobinson.com/presentations.php.

We were most excited to have the opportunity to perform several of Scott’s compositions on our spring percussion ensemble concert, including Ghanaba Celebration for singer/handclappers, Sankofa for congas, shekeres, djembes, and African bells, Trio for Ogun for three congas and three conch shell trumpets (which we performed at PASIC in Austin last November), and a work commissioned by the Winthrop University Percussion Ensemble, Carnatic Variations for tars and bodhrans with solkattu. Scott also performed two of his solo compositions on the concert, Shaken, Not Stirred for riq and Global Positions for ghaval. All pieces are available on NSR’s website, by the way. Check them out at www.nscottrobinson.com/ordering.php (well, maybe not the new piece just yet, but it’ll probably be up soon).

Scott was a featured clinician at the South Carolina Day of Percussion held at Winthrop April 4, 2009. His clinic on hand drumming and brushes was full of very practical hints on performing in a variety of real-world settings.

My students had a great hang with NSR at Winthrop and SCDOP. He’s a wonderful musician, composer, teacher, and friend.

Thanks, Scott!

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I first heard a frame drum at the 1982 Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Dallas, TX. It wasn’t just the amazing variety of sounds Glen Velez got out of a single drum that riveted the audience in that memorable performance. I have never heard any musical instrument played more expressively. Glen’s performance that day raised the bar for me in terms of musical expression. To this day it remains one of the most memorable and inspiring performances I have ever witnessed.

It wasn’t long before Remo came out with a line of frame drums and percussionists started buying them up like hotcakes. My students and I got tars, bodhrans, and riqs and then wondered what to do with them! I began to keep a little notebook in which I notated grooves as I improvised on the drums.

My first composition for a frame drum was actually a transcription of an improvised performance. I had been invited to perform the prelude to a world communion church service. Instead of the usual organ prelude, I played an improvisation on a tar in a style I considered appropriate to the spirit of the occasion. Following the service, I remember one very large man who approached me with what I thought was an angry look on his face. I feared he was offended by my having played a drum in a church service. As he shook my hand, he moved closer and embraced me saying, “That was the most reverent thing I’ve ever heard!” Later on, I wrote down what I had played and called the piece Quatrinity. It was the first of what would become Four Solos for Frame Drums, to my knowledge the first published collection of solos for the instrument. The only work I know of that preceded it was John Cage’s Composed Improvisation for Frame Drum, written for Glen Velez in 1988.

My compositions for frame drums are informed by my experience in American rudimental drumming, some traditional Arabic rhythms, a little South Indian influence borrowed from Glen Velez and N. Scott Robinson, and my own experience with West African drumming. Quatrinity, for example, uses 5-stroke rolls, ruffs, and 11-stroke rolls (executed with the fingers) from rudimental drumming, one-handed kanjira “rolls” from South Indian drumming, and the ubiquitous gankogui bell pattern from West Africa. One of my most recent compositions, Rhythmic Journey No.1 : Conakry to Harare for tar, employs traditional djembe rhythms from Guinea, West Africa sandwiched around a brief reference to the traditional rudimental snare drum solo, Three Camps, before moving on to rhythms derived from a traditional kalimba tune called “Chigwaya” from Zimbabwe and a tune for mbira dzavadzimu titled “Kuzanga.” My first solo for riq, Another New Riq, was influenced almost entirely from the rhythmic feel of the Malinke dance rhythm “Manjani,” even though there aren’t any direct quotes from the original dance rhythm in the piece.
One of my favorite compositions that I don’t think has been performed very often is Etude in Arabic Rhythms from Four Solos for Frame Drums. It’s a great introduction to seven traditional Arabic rhythms: “Dawr Hindi,” “Malfuf,” “Maqsum,” “Saudi,” “Chiftetelli,” “Nawwari,” and “Masmudi.”

Nearly all my frame drum works were written for my students to play on their degree recitals. Way back in the ‘80s, when I was so enthralled with this amazing “new” medium of musical expression, I began writing pieces for the simple reason that my students and I didn’t have any pieces to play on these extraordinarily versatile instruments. I have since encouraged my students to transcribe rhythms, keep their own notebooks of grooves, and compose their own pieces. My best advice is, “If I can do it, you can do it!”

Playing frame drums for me is a visceral experience unmatched by any experience I’ve ever had playing stick drums. There is something about having direct contact with the membrane, and the feel of the various sounding areas of the drum, that seems to put my entire body into vibration. I wanted to give my students an opportunity to have that kind of visceral experience, so I wrote some pieces for them. In the process, I developed an eclectic compositional style that drew on my experiences as a percussionist playing a large variety of music from a wide cultural, geographical, and historical range. Come to think about it, maybe that’s what being a percussionist is all about.

BMW

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Welcome to my news page and blog.  Over the years I’ve had experiences or insights that I thought were worth sharing with a wider audience, but may not have been so significant or thoroughly researched as to warrant a published article. Perhaps this blog will be the perfect venue for little tidbits I’ve discovered about this and that.

I guess I’m a bit of an anomaly in the percussion world, but maybe not. After all, percussionists are by nature “jacks of all trades.” I began my career as an orchestral percussionist and high school band director, then did some research and writing on John Cage, wrote some pieces for frame drums, studied West African drumming, and later learned to play a lamellaphone from Zimbabwe. Some years ago I remember asking a colleague what he’d thought of an article I’d recently published about Stockhausen’s percussion solo No. 9 Zyklus. His response was, “You wrote that? I thought it was another Michael Williams.”

The fact is, diversity is what we percussionists do best. My teacher at Northwestern University, Terry Applebaum, always said, “Our virtuosity is our versatility.” I took that wisdom to heart and it is a major platform in my teaching philosophy. Anyway, I hope to engage you on these pages with some observations, experiences, and my own questions about a variety of topics; frame drums, djembe, contemporary percussion, percussion education, mbira, and my own musings about everything from Almglocken to Zen.

Thanks for visiting… and come back any time!

BMW

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