Maine Perspective Front Page
UMaine Percussion Ensemble to Perform in Cuba
Stuart Marrs and some members of the Percussion Ensemble will perform at the 10th Annual PERCUBA festival in Havana this month.
Marrs, associate professor of music and percussion studies, will take four undergraduates and one alumnus to the week-long festival of concerts, colloquia, contests and workshops April 13-17. Festival attendees will include 400 Cuban members and 40 guest members from 22 countries.
Joining Marrs will be percussion majors Bryan Cook, Michael Hart, Darryl Blease and Kevin Mania, and Christopher Andrews, now a grad student at the University of Minnesota.
"This festival is an intense, exciting event that is international in scope," says Marrs. "These students will get to spend a week mixing with percussionists that are the source of Latin percussion. They will be meeting the best performers in that field."
The ensemble will be performing Uneven Souls by Nebojsa Jovan Zikovic for solo marimba, three percussionists and men's voices, as part of a 50-minute concert. Marrs recently performed the piece with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. Marrs will also deliver a paper, "La Percusión en Costa Rica 1972-82," of which an English translation is forthcoming in Percussive Notes, the journal of the Percussive Arts Society. The paper chronicles his experiences teaching music in Costa Rica.
Marrs says although the students will learn much from the workshops and activities related to the festival, exposing them to the Cuban musical culture will be education enough.
"The immersion into another culture makes a tremendous difference in learning about their music," says Marrs, whose professional experience spans nearly 30 years and three continents. "In Cuba, music is very important."
Percussion Ensemble members have performed a variety of world music genres and were invited to play at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Ohio, where their performance of Uneven Souls was heralded the best of the conference.