Marimba, vibraphone — and fancy footwork

Published 2:35 pm Thursday, January 10, 2008

This concert could be as much fun to watch as it is to hear.

Picture the soloist moving between two rather large wooden instruments — a marimba and a vibraphone. He’s using a mallet, but sometimes he turns the mallet backwards and hits the keys with the handles. Sometimes he just uses his fingers.

It’ll be a party for the eyes and ears when percussionist Matt Kocmieroski performs the “Concerto for Marimba &Vibraphone” by Darius Milhaud at Monday night’s Cascade Symphony Orchestra concert in Edmonds.

“This will be a highly entertaining concerto to watch,” said concertmaster and cellist Norma Dermond. “There’s always a lot of comments about how the percussion section is very busy back there and people who sit on the main floor can miss that. But they’ll get a front row seat for this performance to watch him dance with his instruments.”

Kocmieroski is the principal percussionist with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra. He regularly performs with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera and is on the faculty of the Cornish College of the Arts. He’s also done many recordings of chamber and orchestral music and can be heard on a variety of major and independent motion picture sound tracks.

Kocmieroski selected the Milhaud concerto for this concert perhaps, in part, because it’s considered a state of the art piece for mallet and, in part, because of the additional tricks the composer has the musician doing, such as using the sticks instead of the head of the mallet and occasionally eschewing the mallet altogether.

Also, there’s a lot to see while Kocmieroski is maneuvering between marimba and vibraphone, walking four to five steps at times to get to where he needs to be. The action is on top of the music, a piece packed with lots of colorful tones, expression and certain Latin qualities.

“It’s just amazing to watch him play the two instruments,” Dermond said. “It’s like having a roomful of instruments, and he has to walk around and between them quickly to go from one to another. It’s so fascinating to watch.”

Dermond said that most pieces written for these types of wooden instruments use either the marimba or vibraphone, but rarely both at once. So just in terms of finding space on the stage for everyone and everything has been a challenge, but one that promises to be well worth it, she said.

“Especially the concerto,” Dermond said. “The very beginners to classical music would come to a concert and possibly hear a Brahms symphony and say, ‘Well that’s some classical music, so what?’ But if they hear and watch this percussion concerto they will come away saying, ‘That is so cool.’”

But don’t worry, Brahms fans. The Cascade Orchestra is also presenting the familiar and cheerful Brahms Symphony No. 2.

“The Brahms does ends up very cheery,” Dermond said. “The first movement with all the French horns is quite beautiful, and it’s really a go-getter at the end.”

The orchestra is also performing a series of waltzes by Prokofiev, filled with interesting harmonies that are, Dermond added, also fun to listen to.

Reporter Theresa Goffredo: 425-339-3424 or goffredo @heraldnet.com.