Kevin Hathway is an English percussionist and educator. Besides being a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra, a position he has held since 1979, he is head of wind, brass and percussion at the Purcell School. He is a diploma examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and co-devised their timpani, snare drum and tuned percussion examination syllabus.
From 1986 until 2007, he was head of the percussion faculty at the Royal College of Music. He creates and presents numerous concerts aimed at younger audiences and his unique Elastic Band – a micro-orchestra of 15 musicians – is in great demand throughout the UK and abroad. His themed family concerts for the Philharmonia are a concept he uses with MusicQuest, Britten Sinfonia, Southbank Sinfonia and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. He also directs Alberts Band, an educational chamber group resident at the Royal Albert Hall.
Publications
Graded Music for Snare Drum (Book I to IV) edited with Ian Wright
Graded Music for Tuned Percussion (Book I to IV) edited with Ian Wright
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.
The snare drum is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used in orchestras, concert bands, marching bands, parades, drumlines, drum corps, and more. It is one of the central pieces in a drum set, a collection of percussion instruments designed to be played by a seated drummer and used in many genres of music.
Timpani or kettledrums are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. Thus timpani are an example of kettle drums, also known as vessel drums and semispherical drums, whose body is similar to a section of a sphere whose cut conforms the head. Most modern timpani are pedal timpani and can be tuned quickly and accurately to specific pitches by skilled players through the use of a movable foot-pedal. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet. Timpani evolved from military drums to become a staple of the classical orchestra by the last third of the 18th century. Today, they are used in many types of ensembles, including concert bands, marching bands, orchestras, and even in some rock bands.
Marching percussion instruments are instruments specially designed to be played while moving. This is achieved by attaching the drum(s) to a special harness worn by the drummer, although not all marching bands use such harnesses and instead use traditional baldrics to sling their drums.
A tenor drum is a membranophone without a snare. There are several types of tenor drums.
Dudley Bright was appointed Principal Trombone of the London Symphony Orchestra in 2001 and retired from that position in June 2018. Prior to that, he held the same position with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Halle Orchestra and before that briefly as an associate with the LSO. He is also Professor of Trombone at the Royal Academy of Music.
Walter Sinclair Hartley was an American composer of contemporary (classical) music.
Orchestral percussion refers to the various percussion instruments used in an orchestral setting. It may also refer to the act of playing such instruments in an orchestral style. Many music schools and conservatories offer training for musicians interested in developing their skills as an orchestral percussionist. Typically, an orchestral percussionist does not specialize in one particular instrument. Although there is no exhaustive list of all instruments that an orchestral percussionist must be able to play, there are particular instruments that are frequently used in orchestral repertoire. This includes timpani, snare drum, bass drum, xylophone, glockenspiel, triangle, and tambourine.
The Virginia Band and Orchestra Directors Association is an organization of high school, middle school, and elementary school band and orchestra directors within the Commonwealth of Virginia, whose mission is to help promote opportunities of music education to K-12 students. Many of the events that the VBODA organizes schools from around Virginia to compete with each other, and to give outstanding individual student musicians a chance to work with renowned conductors around the United States. The VBODA is the primary arbiter for various band and orchestra events throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Richard John MillsDMus BA(Hons), is an Australian conductor and composer. He is currently the artistic director of Victorian Opera, and formerly artistic director of the West Australian Opera and artistic consultant with Orchestra Victoria. He was commissioned by the Victoria State Opera to write his opera Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996) and by Opera Australia to write the opera Batavia (2001).
Gareth McLearnon is a Northern Irish flautist, composer and arranger based in Strasbourg, France.
Neil William Thomson is a British conductor and conducting professor.
Symphony in B-flat for Band was written by the German composer Paul Hindemith in 1951. It was premiered on April 5 of that year by the U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own" with the composer conducting.
John Wilson is a British conductor, arranger and musicologist, who conducts orchestras and operas, as well as big band jazz. He is the creator of the John Wilson Orchestra and Associate Guest Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
James John Mayhew is an English illustrator and author of children's books, storyteller, artist and concert presenter/live art performer.
The percussion section is one of the main divisions of the orchestra and the concert band. It includes most percussion instruments and all unpitched instruments.
The Symphony in G minor was the only completed symphony written by Ernest John Moeran. He wrote it in 1934–37. It is in four movements.
Kenneth Alwyn was a British conductor, composer, and writer. Described by BBC Radio 3 as "one of the great British musical directors", Alwyn was known for his many recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra on Decca's first stereophonic recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. He was also known for his long association with BBC Radio 2's orchestral live music programme Friday Night is Music Night, appearing for thirty years as a conductor and presenter, and for his contribution to British musical theatre as a prolific musical director in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and married the actress Mary Law in 1960. His website and the first volume of his memoirs A Baton in the Ballet and Other Places were both published in 2015. The second volume Is Anyone Watching? was published in 2017. A Book of Remembrance was opened on his website in December 2020.
The Percussion Concerto No. 2 is a concerto for solo percussion and orchestra by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. The work was jointly commissioned by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the São Paulo State Symphony. It was first performed on November 7, 2014 at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the Netherlands, by percussionist Colin Currie and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic under conductor James Gaffigan. The composition is MacMillan's second percussion concerto after 1992's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.
Ian Wright was born in Aberdeen, United Kingdom. He studied mathematics at the University of Aberdeen before embarking on a career in music. His main interest outside music is travelling, especially when it involves walking and cycling.
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