A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments. In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone.
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music (cross-rhythm), or a momentary section. Polyrhythms can be distinguished from irrational rhythms, which can occur within the context of a single part; polyrhythms require at least two rhythms to be played concurrently, one of which is typically an irrational rhythm. Concurrently in this context means within the same rhythmic cycle. The underlying pulse, whether explicit or implicit can be considered one of the concurrent rhythms. For example, the son clave is poly-rhythmic because its 3 section suggests a different meter from the pulse of the entire pattern.
Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin American rhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, which includes samba and bossa nova.
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was an Italian classical pianist. He is considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. According to The New York Times, he was perhaps the most reclusive, enigmatic and obsessive among the handful of the world's legendary pianists.
Tan Dun is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor. A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and music. Having collaborated with leading orchestras around the world, Tan is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and both an Academy Award and Grammy Award for his film score in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). His oeuvre as a whole includes operas, orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo and film scores, as well as genres that Tan terms "organic music" and "music ritual."
The Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Sz. 110, BB 115, is a musical piece written by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók in 1937. The sonata was premiered by Bartók and his second wife, Ditta Pásztory-Bartók, with the percussionists Fritz Schiesser and Philipp Rühlig at the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) anniversary concert of 16 January 1938 in Basel, Switzerland, where it received enthusiastic reviews. Bartók and his wife also played the piano parts for the American premiere which took place in New York City's Town Hall in 1940, with the percussionists Saul Goodman and Henry Deneke. It has since become one of Bartók's most performed works.
A solo performance, sometimes referred to as a one-man show or one-woman show, features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieties, including autobiographical creations, comedy acts, novel adaptations, vaudeville, poetry, music and dance. In 1996, Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman became the longest running solo play in the history of Broadway.
Paulinho da Costa is a Brazilian percussionist born in Rio de Janeiro, considered one of the most recorded musicians of modern times. Beginning his career as a samba musician in Brazil, he moved to the United States in the early 1970s and worked with Brazilian bandleader Sérgio Mendes. He went on to perform with many American pop, rock and jazz musicians and participated in thousands of albums. DownBeat magazine call him "one of the most talented percussionists of our time." He played on such albums as Earth, Wind & Fire's I Am, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Madonna's True Blue, Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, hit singles and movie soundtracks, including Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Dancing and Purple Rain among others. He has also toured with Diana Krall. He plays over 200 instruments professionally, and has worked in a variety of music genres including Brazilian, blues, Christian, country, disco, gospel, hip hop, jazz, Latin, pop, rhythm and blues, rock, soul, and world music. He was signed to Norman Granz's Pablo Records for three of his solo albums, Agora, Happy People and Sunrise, as well as Breakdown. Da Costa received the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' Most Valuable Player Award for three consecutive years. He also received the Musicians Emeritus Award.
Earl Howard is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, saxophonist, synthesizer player and multi-instrumentalist.
Guilherme Franco was a percussionist in the jazz and world fusion music genres.
Tom Sleigh is an American poet, dramatist, essayist and academic, who lives in New York City. He has published nine books of original poetry, one full-length translation of Euripides' Herakles and two books of essays. His most recent books are House of Fact, House of Ruin: Poems and The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In an Age of Refugees (essays). At least five of his plays have been produced. He has won numerous awards, including the 2008 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, worth $100,000, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Guggenheim Foundation grant. He currently serves as director of Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Creative Writing. He is the recipient of the Anna-Maria Kellen Prize and Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin for Fall 2011.
Dance Parade is non-profit organization that promotes dance as an expressive and unifying art form by showcasing all forms of dance. It produces an annual street parade and festival in New York City each May, on the third Saturday before Memorial Day. Through its education programming it provides workshops and residencies to schools, community groups and senior centers.
Eva Maria Zuk was a Polish-Mexican piano concertist. She was raised in Caracas, New York City and Mexico City. She began music studies with her mother at the age of 4.
John Serry Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer, as well as a composer of contemporary classical music works that feature percussion, on which he also doubles. He is a son of the accordionist and composer John Serry. His debut solo album was 'Exhibition', for which he received a Grammy Nomination for his composition, 'Sabotage'.
In Florescence is an album by the pianist Cecil Taylor, released in 1990 via A&M Records. It was recorded in New York City on June 8, 1989, and contains performances by Taylor, Gregg Bendian and William Parker. It was Taylor's first major label recording in more than 10 years.
Matīss Akuraters is a Latvian musician- percussionist. He is considered one of the best percussionists in Latvia.
Michael Schelle, born January 22, 1950, in Philadelphia, is a composer of contemporary concert music. He is also a performer, conductor, author, and teacher.
Cosmo Buono is an American pianist, native of New Jersey who completed his piano studies at New York University, Bard College, and The Juilliard School. As a soloist he has been heard in North America, Europe, and Japan, including performances with the Munich Philharmonic and the Danish State Radio Orchestra. He is also the founder of Alexander and Buono International.
The Wallflower World Tour was a concert tour by Canadian singer and songwriter Diana Krall, in support of her twelfth studio album, Wallflower (2015). The tour began in Boston on February 25, 2015, and included dates in North America, Europe, and Asia.
