Members of the Percussion Ensemble will play the role of conductors as they lead each other through chamber music in small ensembles during their concert Thursday.

The concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday in the Dvorak Concert Hall of the Doudna Fine Arts Center.

Jamie Ryan, the director of the Percussion Ensemble and music professor, said this will be the Percussion Ensemble’s first performance of the semester.

“We will feature a few things, first a lot of chamber music for percussion, in other words, lots of small self conducted, self run pieces,” Ryan said.

He said the groups will perform some pitched and non-pitched percussion pieces.

“There will be some things that will be very tuneful and things that are very texturally based, combining different kinds of drums and metallic objects and all these different unusual sounds,” Ryan said.

Ryan said the concert will start and end with pieces of Afro-Cuban percussion.

“We always do a lot of (Afro-Cuban music), but as time goes on, we are able to do more and more,” Ryan said. “The students are getting use to the process of learning that music.”

The concert will also highlight a performance by a member of the ensemble on the marimba.

Jonathan Summers, a senior music major, will be playing a marimba concerto with six other members of the ensemble.

Ryan said the piece they will be playing has four movements and is a standard piece of

“It really shows off the capabilities of the marimba and also of (Summers),” Ryan said.

Ryan said there is a diverse type of music in the concert.

“It is too easy to say that there is something for everybody, but there is, I think within each piece of music that people will hear there is something to take away from it,” Ryan said.

He also said the sound of the music will also be different.

“There are some exotic sounds and there are a lot of different styles and idioms that we cover,” Ryan said.

Ryan said he will only be conducting one piece in the concert.

“I’m proud of how well the students have prepared these pieces, with my direction of course, but because it is a lot of chamber music,” Ryan said. “They’ve really had to a lot of their own work.”

Ryan said the reason they only did one concert this semester is because of the type of music they play.

“It’s pretty rigorous learning music from outside our own cultures,” Ryan said.

He said it also takes the ensembles time to learn the pieces.

“They don’t have to be led by a conductor most of the time, if fact they lead each other through these pieces,” Ryan said. “They have to know one another’s parts and know what the whole of the piece should sound like for it to really come off.”

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.