FAC End Of Year Recognitions

It's been a good year for the percussion program at the Fine Arts Center. Every one of its 22 drummers has made significant progress, amassing layers of technical foundations beneath and expanding artistic vistas above. Co-opting and paraphrasing the multi-layered title of composer John Adams' 1995 musical, "they were looking at the ceiling, and then they saw the sky." Amongst this purposeful peloton of percussionists are three that constitute its vanguard: tyros with fast hands, fast feet, and even faster minds, and our Outstanding New Percussionists for 2009-2010, Isaiah Franklin, Lex Nordlinger, and David Wilson.

As the recently swaddled enter one door, the metaphorically bearded and weather beaten exit the other. Seasoned connoisseurs who can tell the brand of a pair of drum sticks after hearing them clicked together once from the other side of the room, whose fingers fold knowingly around the handles of marimba mallets, their skin recognizing the relief from grain in their wood as well as the tiny areas built up by the sweat from their hands. These two handsome and somewhat quiet boys, who seemed to have been saving their energy for the first three, burst forth in their final year at the Fine Arts Center to learn a host of new techniques, to take on college auditions, and, with pleasant surprise on my part, to earn handsome scholarships in the process. Kudos, congratulations, and gratitude, to fourth year FAC percussion students, Robert Mullis and Zach Perdun.

Nestled in amongst this collection of stick twirlers is a graceful pocket of humanity, three woodwind players who chose to be the songbirds of the 1:15 Instrumental Chamber Music class. Individually and as a unit, they have helped give voice to two large works composed specifically for the class ensemble, as well as a number of other works they have cleverly retooled for this oddball consort of percussionists and woodwind players. Flutist Amber Tepetino took newfound command of rhythm and general technique, as well as an expanding expressive vocabulary to emerge as a skillful and engaging chamber musician. Oboist McKenzie Chelak grasps her music with the incisive intelligence of a surgeon and then performs it with the steely determination of a sharpshooter. Both are recognized for their Outstanding Progress in Woodwinds. It is her breathtaking ability to quickly master new repertoire, the ease with which she is able to emote heartbreaking expressivity, and her inspiring work ethic, however, that earn flutist Merritt Huff recognition as Outstanding Woodwind Student of 2009-2010.

When I was a boy, my grandfather, Auguste, from whom I was given my middle name, noticed that the foundation of our house was sinking on one side. Determined to address the problem, he devised a machine consisting of an enormous fulcrum and a tree trunk as a leaver. He put one end of the tree under the foundation of the house and affixed a box on the other end, filling it with rocks until he was able to lift the foundation back into its original position. Since his arrival in 2007 Wesley Strasser has had a similar effect at the Fine Arts Center, introducing new repertoire, new techniques, lots of new equipment, and great esteem to its percussion program. A brilliant talent and an exceptional young man, heading off to study at the Tanglewood Institute and at Julliard this summer, Wesley Strasser, our Outstanding Junior for 2009-2010, continues to raise the foundation below as well as the bar above at the Fine Arts Center.

Ah, to be so young, handsome, and charming.
To have that quick, winning smile and those fluttering eyelashes.
To be such a chick magnet.
To be able navigate your way through the crowds with such confidence and such an elegance so as to make the rest of look like we have two left feet. How did that Carley Simon song go? "He walked into the party like he was walking onto a yacht."
To have made such stunning progress as a musician in your scant two years at the Fine Arts Center.
To be able to learn so many instruments with such ease, and to be able to make music on each one of them: percussion, keyboards, guitars
To have visiting students from France pull you aside to say, "I luff ze way you play."
To have been able to learn four-mallet marimba in the space of a few weeks.
To have such an intellectual capacity as a musician that you can play large scale repertoire completely from memory.
To be so generous with your gifts, routinely donating your playing to so many otherwise poorer performing organizations.
To have played such a great audition and to have earned such an impressive scholarship to study percussion at the University of South Carolina.
Surely, it must be great to be Moses Andrews, and, among so many other things, my Outstanding Senior for 2009-2010