PASIC 2008 Update and Follow Up
PASIC 2008 update and follow up…by Dominick Cuccia
WOW! To say that was a lot of fun would be an understatement!
So as many of you know I did a clinic at PASIC 2008 on Thursday November 6th at 10am. I was joined by “The Not-So-Traditional Players” featuring Therese Cuccia, Rick Jones, Brendan Mason & Mark Reilly. What an honor it was for me to share the stage with such great musicians!
Nick Phillips from Innovative Percussion introduced us and we started off the session with Therese on fife, Rick on bass and me on snare playing Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine featuring drumming by Ed Classey, Jr. and the fife melody arranged by John Ciaglia. Next I played a snare solo from my book The Beat of a Different Drummer titled The Lonesome Scot & Rocky Road to Dublin. From there we gave a basic recreation of a jam session featuring Ed Lemley’s Crazy Army (fife played Whup Jamboree) and Harold Green’s Black Watch. As an exclamation point to this opener we tagged the medley with a drum beat I wrote for this session titled The Austin Army ’08. Finally, as a salute to some of the fife & drum corps who have influenced all of us we played an arrangement from the repertoire of the Civil War Troopers titled Tribute to the Sons, Regimentals, Yanks & Blues.
Next I got into the clinic portion of the session talking about “Groove & Interpretation.” I opened up with a long roll breakdown and then outlined the many differences between the way you would play it in a Northeastern competition and a modern day drum corps contest. Following a discussion on the interpretation of the 7, 11 & 15 stroke rolls Dennis Delucia joined me on the stage to introduce The Jersey Fulltime, a fun “contemporary ancient” drum solo he wrote.
The next group of rudiments we talked about were from the drag family. We focused on the ratamacue and then Mark Reilly took the stage to perform The Next Generation, a solo I had written for him and another former student of mine, Josh Dukes.
Another drag rudiment that causes problems for many drummers is the double drag. I talked about playing it at different tempos and the possibilities of interpreting it as either a 16th note or quintuplet base. To demonstrate the 16th concept I performed a solo by my friend, the legendary Jack Pratt titled Farmers Museum Muster. It utilizes the double drag in a standard form, but then inverts the rudiment and creates many variations. This is truly a clever piece of music!
The next portion of the session dealt with “not-so-traditional drumming” in both the solo and ensemble settings. For me, one of the most influential snare drum solos is the Cormier 2/4. It definitely affected the direction of many drummers to follow and is as enjoyable for me to listen today as it was 25 years ago. Brendan Mason took to the stage to play it as he is a disciple of the legendary Paul Cormier.
The final two pieces we played as a drum ensemble came to be about 20 years apart. Rice Pudding was a solo I wrote when I was a student at Wilkes College. My teacher, Bob Nowak, asked me to write some rudimental drumming to perform on a percussion ensemble concert. He kept referring to it as “Dominick’s Rudimental Smorgasbord” and I decided Rice Pudding was as good a dessert as any to finish off a meal…I mean concert! The influences on the piece were both obvious and subtle. You can definitely see (& hear) the influence of 1980’s drum & bugle corps. The ending is definitely influenced by the late-Dan Mullen/Old Guard classic Opus 1. What might not be as obvious is the influence of legendary percussionist and teacher John Beck. We had performed some of his music in percussion ensemble including Jazz Variants. The whole theme and variation idea was extremely appealing to me and the entire first half of the solo is my version of what I learned playing his music. I should also mention it was awesome having Steve Fidyk and Steve Primatic in the audience as they were both in the original ensemble that performed it and are two of my dearest friends!
The final piece we did as an ensemble is titled The Drummers Heritage and is dedicated to my friend, Robin Engelmann. It is a tribute to the historic concert which took place at PASIC 2002 and its artistic director, Robin. I had the great honor of performing that night with my wife Therese and Nick Attanasio. It was truly one of the greatest moments I’ve ever experienced. We performed it with the following instrumentation. Brendan on a Cooperman rope drum, me on a Yamaha sfz, Therese on an LJ Hutchen snare, Mark on a Swiss drum and Rick on a Cooperman bass drum. My thought was to have a mini-recreation of the concert finale when everybody performed on their own drums as one large beautiful wall of sound. As different as all of our drums were, they sounded incredible together!
To close the session I invited the PAS Allstars to the stage to join us in a salute to the fife & drum musters of New England with a performance of the Downfall of Paris. As the group was getting setup up it gave me an opportunity to pay tribute to all of the legendary drummers who came before us but never had the chance to take the stage at PASIC. I was also able to share the names Dan English and Dan Mullen with the audience. These were two incredible drummers from different eras who died much too young. There is no doubt in my mind that if they had not left us so soon everybody in that audience would know both names and their legacy would be studied by all of us!
The PAS Allstars were comprised of the following outstanding drummers…Steve Fidyk, Andrew Porter, Willie Calloghan, Eric Sheffler, Jeff Prosperie, John Wooton, John Brennan, Dave Loyal, Garry Kvistad, Lalo Davila, Ken Green, Robin Engelmann, Jeff Moore, Tony McCutchen, Dave Smith, John Roche and Matt Reilly.
I’d like to thank my sponsors for all of their support. They are all great companies and I’m proud to be associated with them!
Cooperman Company
Innovative Percussion
LJ Hutchen
Meredith Music Publications
Yamaha
AND…The Percussive Arts Society, Jeff Hartsough, the Marching Percussion Committee and Neal Flum!
Of course I need to thank Therese, Rick, Brendan & Mark. There is no way I can express how grateful I am to them for their dedication, commitment and sacrifice for this project!
Below are links to the the hand outs for this session:
Please email me with your thoughts, question or comments at dominick@dreadeddrummer.com
Thanks to everybody for your support and I’ll look forward to seeing y’all at a muster, parade, day of percussion or contest real soon!
DC
In the spirit,
Dominick Cuccia
