Trichy Sankaran a Toronto Arts Award Finalist

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The Toronto Arts Foundation has announced its 2011 awards finalists, and we are pleased to congratulate our dear friend and fellow percussionist Trichy Sankaran. He has been named as a finalist, along with Andrew Burashko and Rita Chiarelli, for the Muriel Sherrin Award for International Achievement in Music. Winners of the 2011 Toronto Arts Foundation… Read more »

Opulent Autumn music on October 17th in Toronto

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View photos of rehearsals for this concert .  Get ready for another fabulous evening of music with NEXUS and the piano duo 2X10, in Toronto on October 17th. On the heels of their critically acclaimed Series debut last season,

Measure Twice, Cut Once

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Or, in this case, learn to read music if you’re going to tattoo musical notation to someone’s arm – permanently! Recently, I had the unique experience of meeting a young guy working on a construction crew who had a giant tattoo wrapping around  his arm from his wrist to his elbow.  He was in his… Read more »

A Double Timpani Concerto

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On Saturday Sept. 10 Ruth and I drove to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in the evening to attend a concert of The Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Festival. The weather became drizzly and yet it seemed that about 7 to 8-thousand people braved the dark clouds to be in the Blossom audience. (Fantastic!) The main reason for our… Read more »

The Well-Tempered Mallet Instruments

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For a long while, NEXUS has owned two five octave marimbas and a vibraphone from Adams Musical Instruments . Adams, based in the Netherlands, manufactures timpani, marimbas, bass drums, chimes, mallets, temple blocks and many other percussion instruments.

NEXUS Hits the Ground Running

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We are all back at our desks and in our studios, refreshed. The kids are back at school and that includes NEXUS! They are Ensemble In Residence at the University of Toronto. Russell is on faculty at U of T, Bill is on faculty at Eastman, and Garry and Bob have busy upcoming schedules in… Read more »

Revolutionary Drummer Boys

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Recently I saw in the local newspaper that there was going to be a guided tour dealing with the American Revolution at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester.  Of course, there are a number of luminaries buried there – Susan B. Anthony (women’s rights leader), Frederick Douglas (antislavery advocate), and Col. Nathaniel Rochester, the founder… Read more »

All over the map – NEXUS to converge on Ottawa

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In my last blog post about summer festivals, I suspected I had missed some – and I certainly did! NEXUS’ own Bob Becker is in Fairbanks, Alaska, this week for the Alaska Midnight Sun Chamber Percussion Intensive. Morris Palter is co-faculty with Bob. It’s part of the two-week long Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival.

Festival Round-up: NEXUS in Ottawa

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In two weeks NEXUS will be performing two concerts at the 18th annual Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. The Festival takes place in some of the city’s most beautiful churches and heritage sites both indoors and out. Concert-goers can start their day as early as 10 AM and attend the last concert of the day at the “late-night lounge”, which gets underway at 10:30 PM. NEXUS will be part of one of these great late-nights on July 31st at the beautiful St Brigid’s Centre for the Arts. This follows NEXUS’ Big Birthday Concert, also on the 31st at 8 pm.

The Drag/Ruff Dilemma

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In May, 2011, John Wooton sent an email to many of his drumming friends and colleagues. In it he posed some questions about how to name a basic and historic rudiment. One of the first to respond was Dennis Delucia. There has followed a very interesting and entertaining email debate and discussion about this topic,… Read more »

Article for “The Instrumentalist” – June 1999 Issue

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“The Instrumentalist,” a magazine serving the music education marketplace, contacted me in 1999 about the possibility of writing a short article on the subject of percussion performance at the high school level.  Since my college degree was in ‘Public School Music’ and since I had regularly been invited to coach high school percussionists or to… Read more »

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