Bergjord Boarding

November 12-16

By: Luke

Today PASIC 50 starts in earnest. Dani, Nyssa, and I set out early. We have about an 18 minute walk to the convention center. We take The Indy Canal Walk as a beautiful way to travel downtown. Nyssa had scoped out our route the day before and it made our daily walks very nice.

I should mention Dani and I grabbing continental breakfast bright and early. The hotel had flavored batter waffles and pulled pork breakfast tacos. It was a unique and tasty hotel breakfast!

We already have a couple of sessions planned for the morning. We check out some new composition performances right away at 9. This ranged from contemporary to very contemporary new music. This ended up being an omen for the majority of performances this week.

After an hour of new music Dani had to go help his classmates with their performance. Nyssa and I had our eyes on a mallet clinic. It was about 6 mallet performance and technique. This is very new stuff and has gone from a novelty to more mainstream. Unfortunately the educator decided they didn’t need to use the microphone and we barely caught most of what was said. The secrets are well kept, apparently.

After that we met back up with Dani to see his university percussion ensemble perform. They were fantastic. They combined new orchestrations and performance techniques with absolute talent and skill.

We had a quick break after that including a sandwich some chips, and discussing what we have seen and what we want to see next.

Dani heads over to a drumset clinic while I drag Nyssa to a clinic about marching tenor drum technique. This ended up being the class I learned the most from. It was a mixture of the absolute peak performance and the education behind it. More than anything, there were multiple gems in there for being an effective music educator.

At some point we headed to the Expo hall. I wish I had gotten more pictures of this place. I have one single photo that Nyssa snuck of me trying out a silent drumset.

After some irresponsible spending we went to a couple more clinics before needed more food. There is a break between clinics and a night concert. It is at this time hoards of people leave the convention center and invade downtown Indy. We managed to find a ramen place that wasn’t that busy. It really hit the spot. I also tried a smokey old fashioned and mochi ice cream dessert.

This night concert featured the Jeff Hamilton Trio and the Dafnis Prieto Si o Si Quartet. Jeff Hamilton is a legendary drummer. That being said, his piano player was the absolute star of the show.

Dafnis Prieto ended the show with an energetic set. He can do things on drums that seem impossible. Limb independence is the corner stone of any competent drummer, but he takes it to another level.

All together the first full day of PASIC was an absolute success. We are just getting to the thick of it as we look toward Friday.