William Paterson University Percussion

Busy days for us here at WP Percussion. In the last three weeks we’ve performed at the New Jersey Music Educator’s Conference in Atlantic City, the Necessary Noise Festival in Rahway, and the Verona Day of Percussion. Our students played beautifully!

Spring 2020 will be a great semester. We’re performing at NJMEA, the Necessary Noise Festival, and the Verona Day of Percussion. We’re also starting to lay down tracks for our next recording, featuring music from the 1930s. We’re going old school!

New blog post about memorizing mallet percussion music. Check it out! https://paytonmacdonald.com/2019/04/10/memorizing-mallet-percussion-music/

Last night I attended the Wayne Valley High School music. It was great to see several of our WP alums up there playing trumpet and conducting (Gabe Batiz runs the band program at Wayne Valley and he’s a WP alum). In the pit orchestra Michael DeLuccia (WP alum) was playing drum set and Isabelle Thomas (First-year student, starting Fall 2019) was playing percussion. Elise McAloon was there to support them. Elise is one of our seniors, graduating in May. I was so happy to see all that WP percussion talent in one place!

Isabelle, Elise, and Mike

We recently made an appearance at the New Jersey Music Educator’s Area conference in East Brunswick. As usual, our WP Percussion students performed beautifully.

A few weeks ago a group of WP percussion students traveled to Tampa, Florida to perform on the McCormick Marimba Festival, hosted by University of South Florida and Robert McCormick. The students played music by Guimera, Jarvis, MacDonald, and Bishop. They also got to interact with a lot of amazing students from all over the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Japan, and Europe. Congratulations to our WP students for a great job!

The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble is a professional group in residence at WP and we’re delighted to be performing at PASIC this year with the legendary, four-time Grammy winner frame drum master Glen Velez. We’ve got a Showcase Concert at 2:00 p.m., Saturday, November 17, at Sagamore Ballroom at the Indianapolis Convention Center. If you’re at PASIC please come check out the show!

We had a great visit to Fallon Elementary School in Wayne, NJ, the other day. We played some of Lou Harrison’s music and talked about non-traditional percussion. One of our WP alums Christina Batiz teaches there and she guest conducted. Fun!

Tonight is the night. After many months of hard work we’re getting ready to celebrate 50 years of music making with New Jersey Percussion Ensemble. So many alums and faculty and students will be there, it will be a magical evening! Here’s some of the gear we’re using . . .

And here’s the marquee:

Monday, February 5, 2018, 7:00 p.m., Shea Auditorium. Mark it in your calendar! This is a big, big, big event. Did I say big? It’s BIG!! This concert celebrates 50 years of New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, the professional percussion ensemble in residence at WP since 1968. We have an amazing show, plus a CD release, plus the trailer for the upcoming documentary film about NJPE. We’ll see you there!