1979 LAYING GROUNDWORK At least 2 personal projects in 1979 laid groundwork for the future. Bill and Garry tried a couple new directions. During the 1970s while rummaging for xylophone music, Bill had found several large boxes of sheet music in a Rochester antique shop. The hundreds of titles had been published in the early… Read more »
1977: FIRST NEXUS COMMISSION Bob Becker tells us that “The first piece commissioned by NEXUS came from the Canadian composer Bruce Mather in 1977. (We would premiere it in April ’78.) At that time, Bruce’s music was known only vaguely by most of us, but Robin Engelman had become an admirer. He made the commission… Read more »
1975: DIFFERENT MUSIC We continued performing our George Hamilton Green ragtime arrangements. Bob Becker was totally smitten, and says, “I was tracking down all of it”. For two appearances, we played rags and also our improvisation at the famous (or infamous) Bohemian Embassy coffeehouse in Toronto which (thanks to founder and long time CBC performer… Read more »
For your enjoyment, the NEXUS performance of “Bolero – Spanish Dance No.5“ is now on YouTube! You can access it HERE. “Bolero – Spanish Dance No. 5” by Moritz Moszkowski, performed by NEXUS with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra in 1992 on “The Story of Percussion in the Orchestra” (NEXUS CD#10306). Featuring Bob Becker on xylophone…. Read more »
In the early days of Nexus, our concerts were totally improvised featuring many non-Western percussion instruments that we collected. John Wyre was an influence on all of us as he brought instruments from his travels to Asia to our improv sessions. I began scouring antique stores, import shops, and yard sales and discovered a few… Read more »
1973: EXPANSION We were performing “our own unique brand of improvised music”, says Bill, with the “simple desire to expand our own musicianship…There was absolutely no thought given to marketing – there was no market!” 1973 took us to the CBC Winnipeg Festival and also brought us our first foray into film music for Canadian… Read more »
GUESS WHAT! NEXUS is celebrating its 50th season! To celebrate, over the coming year we’re going to bring you snapshots of each year in our career. We have been posting weekly on our Facebook and Instagram feeds: Fifty years, fifty weeks! Every now and then, we will amalgamate the latest posts and place them here… Read more »
We are delighted to announce that NEXUS member Garry Kvistad will be inducted into the Percussion Hall of Fame this autumn, along with Ndugu Chancler and Neil Peart. Garry joined Nexus Percussion in the Fall of 2002 and is one of 18 musicians to win a Grammy award for the 1998 recording of Steve Reich’s… Read more »
NEXUS with the TorQ Percussion Quartet with Special Guest vocalists Lindsay Kesselman and Cory Knight
I’ve known from a young age that good sounds are healing, and I’ve made the study of music and sounds my life’s work. I have had a few “sound” mentors who have helped open my ears. Among them were Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Harry Partch and Lou Harrison. Pauline taught us “Deep Listening,” whereby you… Read more »
I have known Alan and Janet Abel for sixty-four years and every one of those years has been a blessing. Like so many others, I feel like they are my “second parents,” so the loss of Mr. Abel is much like losing a member of my own family. This story is a small tribute to… Read more »
In 1960, I was a student in the tenth grade at Putnam City High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. My English teacher, Mrs. Thomas, gave our class an assignment to research the occupation that each of us hoped to pursue and write an essay about it. She gave us a list of questions to use… Read more »
Hi all. We hope all of you are keeping well and STAYING HOME! All of us here are doing fine. Thank you to all of you who have continued to visit our Facebook page, and to our new Facebook followers who have come on board in the last few weeks. There have been quite a… Read more »
* To order online: 1) place order by email to: billcahn@aol.com OR by phone/text to: (585) 354-5843 2) a link to DropBox will be emailed back to you 3) the DropBox link will enable you to download the digital book (pdf file) 4) an invoice payable in 10-days… Read more »
It’s the beginning of 2020 and I am already reminiscing about 2019. Here’s a short video of the highlights and photos from our production of the Drum Boogie Festival last September in Woodstock, NY. We are very proud of it and hope you’ll enjoy checking it out. It’s a lot of work putting this together,… Read more »
