Jeffry Mason

Percussion

How many years have you played with EPO?

I played with the EPO a few times while I was at university as an extra, joined as a fulltime section percussionist in 2014-2015 and was made principal the following year.

What is your experience as a musician?

I started out in Navy League Cadet Corps military bands, moved on to the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets, a number of Toronto and Chicago based competitive drum and bugle corps and have played with, and conducted, most of the orchestras in Toronto and Hamilton. I had originally started out as a Music Education major at the U of T and, by the third year, caught 'the conducting bug'. Since switching careers from professional symphony orchestras administration in the mid 90s, I have focused on the orchestral repertoire and am currently performing with five local orchestras.

What do you do outside of the orchestra?

I'm an accountant and specialize in reports, forecasts and budgets for organizations in the Not-For-Profit sector.

What do you think is special about percussion instruments?

Any instrument which is struck is considered a percussion instrument. In fact, even the 'hammer action' on the piano have led some to consider it to be a percussion instrument. As the timpani are' struck' with a mallet, they are part of the 'percussion family'. Most think of percussion as a rhythmic voice but, starting in the late 1900s, tuned percussion became much more prevalent (i.e. glockenspiel/orchestra bells, xylophone, chimes/tubular bells). With the advent of pedal timpani and all of the mallet, or keyboard, percussion instruments, the section often takes on melodic and, at times, harmonic duties too. I guess that's what's 'special' about us. We're chameleons and can create soft or loud sounds for short or long durations. Although we DO phrase, like wind players, we don't have to breathe, that is, unless we're playing the Nightingale, Slide Whistle or numerous other 'sound effects' composers employ.

How do you feel percussion/timpani are best used in the orchestra?

Among the earlier writers, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky all wrote VERY good, interesting parts for timpani. Among later composers, Strauss, Mahler, Sibelius, Nielsen, Prokofief and Shostakovich have very satisfying parts too. All timpanists start their musical lives with the work of Beethoven and I'm lucky to have played them all, several times, with one exception. The 4th. Matthew, are you listening? :-) I do love all of the other composers I listed, but Sibelius really interests me as he uses the instrument in a very unique way. Sometimes, he calls on us to supply the rhythm and punctuation to phrases. At other times, we are treated as a harmonic voice and, occasionally, a melodic one (i.e. the 3rd movement of Sibelius Symphony No. 1). The key to playing his works well is knowing which 'voice' you are and how you fit in to the fabric of the whole. My conducting studies are a GREAT help in this respect. There are many good percussion parts too but, as a player, one would have to give examples of parts for specific instruments. If I had to choose one piece where the entire percussion is used 'masterfully', it would be Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. All of the parts are integral to the whole. Ravel wrote very well for percussion too.