CSO Presents a Rach Concert with Percussion Made of Recycled Materials

Upcycling is all the rage and environmentalism is on the forefront of everyone’s mind, so it’s not hard to believe that even the symphony is going green.

This week, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra is performing what they’re calling “an unusual concert” programmed around an entire concerto composed for instruments made out of garbage. “The Garbage Concerto: A Concerto for Recycled Garbage and Orchestra” composed by Jan Jarvlepp, is a complete work for orchestra featuring an ensemble of percussionists playing instruments made of upcycled materials.

George Del Gobbo, CSO’s beloved maestro, called the concerto “a masterpiece of whimsical repurposing and ingenuity.” The concerto was written in 1995, and calls for recycled cans, hubcaps and bottles of all shapes and sizes.

Adding to the unusual nature of the show, the CSO has programmed a romantic Rachmaninov work to contrast with the highly contemporary and edgy Jarvlepp piece.

Del Gobbo is excited for the audience to experience a concert pushing the comfort boundaries of a traditional symphony concert program.

“On the one hand, there is the incredibly lyrical music of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony,” Del Gobbo said. “It's one beautiful melody after another. The other piece on the program is traditional in every sense but one, and that is the solo percussion quintet that plays very non-traditional instruments, instruments recycled from found objects. In other words: trash. Hence the name: Garbage Concerto.”

The Garbage Concerto will feature CSU’s Professor of Percussion, Paul Vaillancourt. Vaillancourt has been a featured soloist at the Banff and Aspen Summer Music Festivals, Sound Symposium Music Festival in Newfoundland, with the National Arts Center and Ottawa Symphony Orchestras and the St. Petersburg Chamber Orchestra in Russia.

Also joining Vaillancourt on the stage will be Up/Down Percussion, a quartet founded by members Jonathan Mashburn, Joel Castro, Jordan Walsh and James Klausmeyer. The group regularly performs both as a quartet and in smaller duo and trio settings.

Both Walsh and Mashburn are alumni of Columbus State University. The group members are currently pursuing graduate degrees respectively at the University of Michigan, Indiana University, the University of Texas at Austin and Columbus State University.

Vaillancourt said there are several challenges with performing this type of concerto.

“First, it’s a challenge just gathering and building the instruments, and finding good sounding pieces of recycled materials,” said Vaillancourt. “Then, the second movement presents several challenges in that it is not very easy to find the correct sized bottles and keep them tuned accurately. We continually have to adjust water levels due to evaporation and spillage.”

That’s not the worst of it though.

“The most substantial challenge in the entire piece for percussionists is performing and rehearsing the second movement without passing out,” said Vaillancourt. “Not being wind or brass players, we haven't had the opportunity to develop the kind of lung capacity and breath control necessary to play the bottles for extended periods of time.

Performers work on developing their endurance and lung capacity over the course of rehearsals by alternating sections of the second movement with the first and third. They work their way up to completing the entire movement in one sitting.

“Yes sitting, or else we'd fall over,” Vaillancourt said.

It’s not Vaillancourt’s first time working with or performing the piece.

“Personally, this piece is a nostalgic walk down memory lane as I participated in the premiere of the piece in 1996 as a student at the University of Ottawa, playing with my teacher Ken Simpson and the section of the Ottawa Symphony, of which I was a regular member,” Vaillancourt shared. “I'm very thankful to Maestro Del Gobbo for even considering programming something so unusual.”

The experience is more rewarding this time around since Vaillancourt will be performing with his former students.

“The guys from Up/Down Percussion, James Klausmeyer, Jordan Walsh, Jonathan Mashburn and Joel Castro, are all completing or have since completed Masters degrees at some of the best programs in the country. They have developed into such fine players, performers and people,” he said. “I'm thrilled to be able to share the stage with these colleagues and friends.”

For more information about this concert or to purchase tickets, visit csoga.org or call 706-256-3645.

This story was originally published January 14, 2018 at 1:39 PM with the headline "CSO Presents a Rach Concert with Percussion Made of Recycled Materials."