LOU’S TUBES AND CULINARY DELIGHTS Our busy April 2018 took us to Kingston NY to help the Ulster Chamber Music Series celebrate their 50th and to Hyde Park NY to the Culinary Institute of America! In Kingston, the hall was set with big suspended tubes at the compass points for the concert opener, “Greeting Prelude”… Read more »
ROBIN ENGELMAN Six years ago, on February 26th 2016, we received the sad news of the passing of NEXUS founding member Robin Engelman. The tributes poured in – moving, funny, telling – as colleagues, students, friends read the announcement. You can see these amazing comments on the home page of Robin’s website at www.robinengelman.com. Andrew… Read more »
On the first day of music history class at the Oberlin Conservatory in 1967, our professor asked, “What is music?”. It was like a Zen kōan, and everybody contemplated it for the rest of the semester. We continued to learn music of the classical European repertoire, but I don’t remember if there was an answer to… Read more »
SEPIDEH RAISSADAT and PERSIAN SONGS Our remarkable collaboration with Iranian vocalist Sepideh Raissadat began in 2014. Russell Hartenberger created several new arrangements for NEXUS and voice and entitled the suite “Persian Songs”. It was premiered at the Open Ears Festival in Kitchener Ontario, reprised at a Walter Hall concert in Toronto, and then we… Read more »
FEELING THE PULSE Spring touring took us to California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, the Episcopal Collegiate School in Little Rock AR, La Grange College GA and Wittenberg University OH. We opened each with Music For Pieces Of Wood, and we had guests provide “the pulse”: Dave Johnson, Eric Saoud, Ken Passmore and Marc Smarelli… Read more »
LUMINOUS ACOUSTICS In July 2010 we returned to Garry Kvistad’s “Woodstock Beat” event at Maverick Hall just outside Woodstock NY. We were joined by Sō Percussion and Steve Reich as we had been in 2008 at the Ojai Festival in California. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the writing of Reich’s “Drumming”. We too… Read more »
We are excited to share with you a brand new website, www.DRUMMINGat50.com, that NEXUS has created in partnership with Sō Percussion, celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Steve Reich’s monumental work “Drumming”. Russell Hartenberger, Ray Dillard, and Alex Kessaris have been working for months to bring this to its fruition. A full performance of the piece,… Read more »
I first met Ron Snider in the 1980s while touring with Steve Reich and Musicians and later while working with NEXUS Percussion. Besides being an amazing musician, a loving husband and father, an expert in world music and inventive designer and builder of musical instruments, Ron was a wonderful human being. His recent untimely passing… Read more »
#NEXUSat50 1984 FOUR MONTH WORLD TOUR: CHINA! In May we embarked on a tour that would take us to 10 countries. This meant putting a great many other things in Life on hold – but what an opportunity! We began in China where we were the first Western percussion group to perform in the People’s… Read more »
#NEXUSat50 1982 PLAYING WITH POETRY We spent 3 days at Toronto’s McClear Place with 78-year-old poet Earle Birney, recording a 3 volume set. Released in LP and audio cassette format, they have never been re-issued as CDs, but 2 of the poems were included in our later “The Best of NEXUS” CD. We had… 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 »
NEXUS Playing Cage’s Dance Music for Elfrid Credit: Donald Dietz, courtesy of The John Cage Trust Long ago I knew that music would be my future. I knew then that percussion specifically would be my passion. This all started in the fourth grade when I joined the school band. Through the years I’ve come to… Read more »
It’s Spring – and a LOT is happening. Russell Hartenberger has been at Virginia Tech workshopping his new piece “Magic Time” commissioned by Escape Ten. Tonight (May 4th) is the premiere. The duo is performing “Magic Time” on marimba with a quintet (the Virginia Tech Percussion Ensemble ) performing on tuned cymbals newly created for… Read more »
