One of the best tributes to honor a professor is to perform his composition while he listens in the audience.

The Percussion Ensemble, directed by Nancy Matheson, professor of Music, performed a concert on Thursday, April 24 in the Harriet Fulton Theatre.

The ensemble began the evening with Trio Sonata No. 1 by Joseph Haydn, arranged by James Moore.

The next piece performed by the ensemble was Percusssion Suite, No. 2. The piece was written by Scott Roberts, UTM assistant professor of Music.

“It felt good to hear the ensemble perform something I wrote,” said Roberts. “Sometimes I have to remind myself that I was the one who wrote the piece. They did a very good job.” The piece included six movements titled In Search of..., Why Not?, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to..., At the Waldorf, I Hope it Hasn’t Come to This and An Appeal.

According to the program the suite chronicles the journey of the composer as he searches for a different way to express himself in music.

In it he explores different tonal relationships and/or lack of tonality, rhythmic diversity and approaches composition. “It [the composition] wrote itself,” said Roberts. “I got many different ideas and worked on them. Everything I write reflects something that I am personally going through.”

In African Welcome Piece by Michael Udow, the composition takes three different rhythms and uses it to work with the energy and spirit, which exist in all African communities.

The piece had a distinct African theme to it. The performance mixed percussion instruments with vocals.

Lauren Evans, Melvin Isabel, Lewis Thompson, Tamia Whiteside, Vannie Williamson and David Alan Winton were a part of the African Welcome Piece chorus.

The singers performed a tribal-like chant with drumming, rattling and shaking of the percussion instruments.

Stubernic, performed by Benjamin Martin, Josh Petty and Bryan Scott was indeed truly interesting to watch.

The trio played the marimba, each playing the same rhythm but in different keys. In the middle of the performance, the trio played across the scales continuously.

When one of them would reach the end, he would run to the other side of the percussion instrument and continue playing across.

The last piece performed by the Percussion Ensemble was Concerto for Marimba, Percussion and Synthesizers by Daniel McCarthy.

Timothy Fritz did an outstanding job playing the marimba in this last piece.

The mood of the piece was very energetic mainly due to the fact that the percussionists were all whooping and hollering and encouring the members of the audience to clap along with them.

The piece seemed to be intense at times and then back to being a fun, lighthearted piece.

“It was a good concert,” said Lewis Thompson, a senior Vocal Education major from Jackson. “It had a nice variety of styles with different international rhythms throughout the concert.”

According to Nancy Matheson, director of the Percussion Ensemble, the members of the ensemble had spent the entire semester working and preparing for the concert.

“I was extremely proud of them,” said Matheson, professor of Music. “They’re very hardworking kids.”

For more information on concerts, call 7402.