Shake, Rattle and Roll

With the debut of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and its 360-degree audience seating, the boys in the back row are now center stage to many a symphony-goer. The L.A. Philharmonic’s four percussionists offer tonal color on their newfound stardom.

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Raynor Carroll

Principal percussion

Joined 1983

How do you like being under the nose of the audience?

It’s great. We can hear people unwrapping their cough drops.

How does one become a triangle player?

You have to be a percussionist. You start on snare drum. Along the line you start studying tambourine, castanets, cymbals, triangle.

How weird can it get?

I’ve had to break champagne glasses and dinner plates.

What does a triangle add to an orchestra?

A triangle should not sound a pitch like a bell. It should be a mixture of overtones.

A critic reportedly dissed Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat for inserting something “as strange as a triangle.” Has this noble instrument gotten a bad rap?

Well, you wouldn’t send your child to study triangle as you would violin.

Do you know any triangle jokes?

Usually it’s viola jokes.

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James Babor

Percussion

Joined 1993

How do you like the new visibility?

It’s less comfortable but more enjoyable.

How do you pass the time while the strings and winds are having at it?

The Beethoven Ninth is infamous for percussionists. We sit around for three movements and then play for maybe 45 seconds. I’ll pick people in the audience and try to see what they’re doing.

What sort of things do you see?

I’ve seen people reading newspapers . . . not the program, a newspaper.

What are your main instruments?

The keyboard instruments like the xylophone, marimba, vibes.

What’s the xylophone’s star turn?

The most challenging is the overture to [Gershwin’s] “Porgy and Bess.” [Music director] Esa-Pekka Salonen’s own pieces are harder than that.

Is there a percussionist type?

We’re characterized as partying types. Violinists are more intellectual. Percussion and the low brass are sort of the same.

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Mitchell Peters

Principal timpani

Joined 1969

How are you adjusting to life in the spotlight?

I enjoy it. People come up and ask questions.

What is a star vehicle for timpani?

The timpani in the Beethoven Ninth is a huge part. In Symphony No. 6 (“Pastorale”), he wanted to emulate thunder.

Do you make cannon noises?

Usually when they want a cannon, they write for bass drum. For the 1812 Overture, I once did it with real cannons. In Texas, where else?

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Perry Dreiman

Percussion

Joined 1985

What are your specialties?

I play a lot of snare drum as well as the gourd. It’s actually a squash.

Did you ever think you’d end up in a tuxedo playing a vegetable?

No, and I’m in my 19th year.

How did you get into this?

I wanted to be the next Ringo Starr, but I’m very happy the way things turned out.

Isn’t much of the classical repertoire a bit light on percussion?

The Bruckner Eighth Symphony is approximately an hour and a half long and has one [percussion] note.

Have you missed that note?

It hasn’t happened here, but rumor has it that it has happened.

Funniest percussion section story?

We were playing a piece written by the then [Philharmonic] music director Andre Previn, with a theater piece by Tom Stoppard. We were supposed to be pretending to play. The protagonist is in a hospital bed, hearing an orchestra in his head. The lights come up, it’s silent. A colleague who’s now retired stands up, picks up a pair of cymbals and smashes them together. That was funny to me but not to Andre Previn.