Clinician Name: Andrew M. Bliss E-mail Address: andybliss@me.com
Clinic Title: Percussion Throwdown! Challenging Your Percussion Section to Use Their Finest Ingredients
Clinic Synopsis: This masterclass addresses how to foster expression and musical sensitivity in a high school percussion section. Similar to a 3-course meal, a well-prepared percussion section has to have all the fixin's, including great organizational skills and musical intuition. This session will layout a simple 3-step process that engages percussion students mentally and demands that they produce an expressive sound and interpretation in rehearsal and performance.
What is the target audience for this clinic? All orchestra, band, and choir educators as well as current undergraduate and graduate Music Education majors.
What will the audience take away from this clinic? I intend to provide some fresh ideas about how we can treat percussionists as an equal part of a musical ensemble, and hope this will provide directors with some new content for rehearsal critique and some strategies for keeping their percussionists invovled and engaged.
What is included in the handout? The handout will be two-fold. It will provide content and musical examples that will support our immediate time together during the session, and will also provide some resources and reference material that educators can keep handy for everyday percussion challenges.
Is there anything else you would like attendees to know about this clinic? The content that will be covered will have something for everybody: instrument and implement selection, strategies for setup and organization, tangible ways to help our percussionists learn to phrase and play with musicality, and some ways we can introduce interpretation to our high school students.
Biographical Information: Andrew M. Bliss has extensive experience in a wide variety of musical ensembles and genres, while specializing in contemporary solo and chamber performance. Bliss is the artistic director of the Nief-Norf Project, a chamber percussion group that performs modern music, and is also a member of the piano/percussion duo Nothing in Common. Bliss has been a featured artist at the Intermedia Festival, the SEAMUS National Conference, the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), the College Music Society’s International Conference (Croatia), and at multiple Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. Equally interested in scholarship and pedagogy, Bliss has presented at the National Conference on Percussion Pedagogy, the Society for Music and Minimalism’s 2nd International Conference, and at the Association for Technology in Music Instruction’s National Conference.
Sponsor: Yamaha; Innovative Percussion; Evans Drumheads; Black Swamp Percussion