The interesting mallet photo here is the logo from percussionist Stewart Hoffman’s website. This week Stewart is blogging about The University of Delaware’s recent week-long percussion workshops, one of which is Bob Becker’s annual Ragtime Xylophone Institute. Last year, Stewart created a very nice piece about NEXUS founding member John Wyre and posted it to his blog. You can link over to Stewart’s website and read it there …
1853. George D. Klinehanse, The Manual of Instruction For Drummers, On An Improved Plan. Containing The Rudiments Of Drum — Beating; with rules for Common, Quick, and Compound Time: together with The Whole Of The Camp Duties Etc. prepared under the direction of the adjutant General of the United States Army, approved of by the commander-in-Chief And Adopted For The Use Of The Army Of The United States. 27 rudiments.
Until it was replaced by the Gardiner A. Strube Instructor in 1869, …
In two weeks’ time, NEXUS will be performing in the extraordinarily beautiful Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Nishinomiya City near Osaka and Kobe in the Hyogo Prefecture. As mentioned in my earlier blog post, the Center was opened in 2005 to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Great Hanshin Earthquake which largely devastated Nishinomiya and the surrounding cities. The NEXUS concerts will take place in the Grand Hall of the Center. The Grand Hall …
The Canadian Brass “Stars & Stripes” CD has made its debut, and came out at a solid #10 on the Billboard Charts! You will remember that back in February, NEXUS members were busy with the Canadian Brass, recording the stirring arrangements of Howard Cable and Robin Engelman. Robin blogged about it here. You can check out the excellent reviews of the recording - as well as …
If you are a percussionist, you might do a double-take when you see the Kobe Port Tower in Kobe, Japan. It is designed to look like a tsuzumi, a traditional Japanese hand drum! And NEXUS will be seeing it soon. After a remarkable 3 months with sell-outs in Toronto, Minnesota and New York State, NEXUS is in busy preparation for their September trip to Kobe.
In 1973 NEXUS was involved in a 2-week residency at York University, just outside of Toronto. Several of us (at least Bob and I) stayed at Robin’s farm house in King City.
One afternoon (or evening?) we had some time to kill and as we sat around Robin’s desk we took turns creating doodles on the back sides of 3X5 cards. It was actually a lot of fun as we tried to outdo one another with our images.
Recently, while cleaning out my desk I …
What a grand summer for NEXUS! After their sell-out appearance at the Minnesota Beethoven Festival at the beginning of July, they have followed it up with another sell-out in Woodstock, New York on July 31st.