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Got rhythm?
Michael Hollan brings Bethel into the "age of percussion"
by Mayeken Kehr
Ceramic flowerpots, thunder sheets and even automobile brake drums – not instruments that usually come to mind when thinking of a musical ensemble. But the unexpected is part of the beauty of a percussion ensemble, as many Bethel College students and alumni are discovering.
Michael Holland, adjunct professor of percussion, leads Bethel’s Percussion Ensemble, an intriguing new project of the music department. Holland began his percussion career when his father swapped a Korean opium pipe for a set of vintage bongo drums in the 1960s. His formal education in percussion began in fifth grade with studies in snare drum and later timpani.
The appealing “range of tonal colors available in percussion,” he says, led Holland to earn his Bachelor of Science degree in music education at Mount Senario College in Ladysmith, Wis., and a Master of Arts degree in percussion performance from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston. He went on to study Indian classical music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan and Sri Swapan Chaudhuri.
Holland is currently first-call percussionist for the Wichita Symphony. Among his other orchestral experience, he can list the Minnesota Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Spoleto Festival. He has appeared with such artists as Andy Williams, Patrick Stewart, the Bolshoi Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre.
With these and other impressive credentials, Holland is well-suited to lead Bethel’s percussion program. He hopes the Percussion Ensemble will allow “students who are studying any aspect of percussion. . . [to] directly apply what they are learning in lessons.” Not only that, but through the Percussion Ensemble students are exposed to the vast options available to percussionists in current society.
“We are living in what many consider to be the ‘age of percussion,’” Holland adds. “As an instrument grouping, percussion is especially adept at reflecting the nature of life in the modern world.”
And so, enter the flowerpots and thunder sheets. Mark Smith ’02, current resident director of Haury Hall, is a member of the Percussion Ensemble. He expresses excitement when discussing the atypical instruments and compositions written for percussion.
“We’ve played a lot of pieces that I’ve never heard of before,” Smith says. “For example, we have an all vocal percussion piece. It is not pitched, but is rhythmic and plays with enunciations – really syncopated. It is the kind of piece that you wouldn’t find other ensembles playing.”
Smith, like Holland, began taking formal percussion lessons around fifth grade. His studies began with a fellow church member when his family lived in Fort Worth, Texas. Later, at Bethel, Smith studied with Steve Unruh and Steve Hatfield. However, his first introduction to percussion came quite a bit earlier, he says.
“When I was around the age of two or three, my parents got me a JCPenney drum set. I would bang on them so much so that my parents eventually moved the set to the attic.
“I love rhythm,” he continues. “I have this habit of unconsciously tapping beats during meetings – it’s a habit that I think tends to annoy some people.” Smith has not studied percussion since taking lessons during his last year at Bethel, but hopes that this ensemble will serve as a good way to “keep up [his] chops.”
Nathaniel Yoder, a sophomore from Kalona, Iowa, has plenty of opportunities to keep up his musical chops as he participates in the Percussion Ensemble, Wind Ensemble, Jazz Ensemble I and Concert Choir at Bethel, as well as the band Perder Pie, whose members also include Daniel Glascock, junior from Cunningham, and Joshua Piper ’07.
Yoder also began percussion with a trapset, which his parents bought him on his 10th birthday. But, Yoder emphasizes, “It’s not percussion that I love, it’s the groove. When the beat is solid and the generated pulse makes people want to move, I am satisfied.”
Although both Smith and Yoder say they don’t have long-term aspirations for a career in percussion, they both continue to play simply because they enjoy it.
While these percussionists find delight in percussion itself, there is something that sets a percussion ensemble apart from merely “playing percussion in an ensemble.” Holland highlights several of these differences.
“[First,] we have to take a lot of time to set the instruments to play any particular percussion composition. [Second,] a player in a percussion ensemble is often playing [practically] nonstop while in any other ensemble the percussionist may have extended time at rest – so this requires the player to maintain a constant level of concentration to stay connected to the performance.”
Besides the logistics of performance, the Percussion Ensemble allows percussionists to “learn more . . . because the focus is on percussion, the focus is on ‘my instrument,’” Smith says. Yoder distinguishes the benefits of a percussion ensemble as coming through the creative freedom of the compositions. Because the group is composed completely of percussionists, the music and instrument selections can be more versatile than in traditional ensembles.
For example, Yoder explains that one arrangement “contains no mallet percussion. [It is] almost completely void of melody. Such a piece still contains plenty of melodic ideas, but they are realized in completely different ways that are not as strictly bound to tonality.”
Freedom becomes an advantage and an incentive for composers to write for percussion. They are able to implement objects directly from their environment into a piece of music. Holland notes, “If [an object] makes a sound when struck, it can be a sound source for a composer.”
Other members of the Bethel College Percussion Ensemble are Brent Badawieh, senior from Parsons, Matthew Hershberger, sophomore from Clay Center, and Blake Long, senior from Moran.
Mayeken Kehr is a sophomore from Goshen, Ind., majoring in English and Spanish.