Practice, Practice

I got to Carnegie Hall the easy way, the rain aside. A short cab ride and free tickets. Not to the main hall that was hosting Joan Osborne, but next door, to the smaller gem of Weill Recital Hall that hosted the Distinctive Debuts series. Martin Grubinger, the multipercussionist, was the performer with Per Rundberg on Piano. Martin thumped ones' eardrums to a frantic frequency and simmered them down with the magical marimbaphone (with multiple mallets in each of his hands) until there was near-silence and even the scratching of my pen on paper felt like an intrusion (videos, clips 3, 5). Brilliant, as the British youth would say. For the encore, he brought on some boyish playfulness --- no one can really be close to drums for any period of time without being playful --- and his father joined in, and one eventually understood how the little boy Martin could have started on this path for his life at the age of 5. I wrote off this week as a loss, took it off my books, because I had to miss my private tour of the Guggenheim museum on Thursday, but this friday evening performance saved the week.