A variety of different music, some distinctively from other countries, was performed by the EIU Percussion Ensemble symphony Thursday night.

Kyle Dombroski, a freshman psychology major with a minor in music, said playing dynamically is the most difficult thing in mastering a composition.

“Learning notes is pretty simple but to actually put meaning into it is pretty challenging,” Dombroski said.

Dombroski said he thought the performances went well.

“Overall our hard work and practice paid off,” Dombroski said. “You always have to think ‘we can do better.'”

He also said the most important thing to remember as musician is that if there is a mistake and something unexpected happens onstage, you have to keep going and most of the time the audience will not even notice.

“Listening to each other is also very important,” Dombroski said.

Patrick Rheingruber, a graduate student seeking a percussion performance degree, explained the hardest part of mastering a composition.

“(The hardest part of mastering a composition is) making sure all the parts are fitting correctly and making them sound the way they should,” Rheingruber said. “Sometimes it’s hard trying to get it on paper,” when it came to mastering a composition.

When perfecting a piece Rheingruber stated that it depends on the difficulty of the piece and the skill level of the musicians.

He said the most important thing to remember as a musician is to try to stay calm while playing.

“Just being as relaxed as possible; the more tense you are the more errors there will be,” Rheingruber said.

The director of the night’s performances and a professor of percussion, Jamie V. Ryan, said that generally they are still working when it comes to perfecting a composition.

“You’re generally never done with a piece of music,” Ryan said.

Ryan said he believes that every piece on the program deserved a different type of skill or sensibility since they were from various countries such as Cuba and Japan; it is a mastery of a different genre.

“It all requires a different type of approach and skill,” Ryan said, “it’s different for every piece.”

He said the most important thing to remember as a musician is to play as a group and to make sure you are sensitive to the music and the group.

“You never really make it about yourself but about the music. One of my teachers always told me ‘just play the tune, man,”’ Ryan said.

Shaun Johnson can be reached at 581-2812 or sajohnson6@eiu.edu.

The Percussion Ensemble performs “Elegua,” a traditional Afro-Cuban song, during its concert in the Doudna Fine Arts Center’s Dvorak Concert Hall Thursday. (Danny Damiani

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