Albany Symphony Orchestra makes capital investment in percussion equipment

ALBANY — When the Albany Symphony Orchestra opens its 2017-18 performance season this month, it will be using, for the first time, its own percussion instruments.

That was one of the reasons that Claire Fox Hillard, music director and conductor of the symphony, planned the first Paul Peach Masterworks Concert to be a Latin-infused program that will emphasize percussive sounds.

“We have them (the pieces) ordered,” ASO Executive Director Joelle Fryman said last week. “It’s going to be really impressive.”

Hillard said the new instruments, which should arrive shortly, will give the orchestra the luxury of scheduling programs such as the one the ASO will open with at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Albany Municipal Auditorium. To do a program like this one, which will feature music from “Carmen” and “West Side Story,” the ASO normally would have to coordinate with other organizations first to ensure the needed pieces would be available.

“We’ve borrowed instruments in the past from Darton (now Albany State University West Campus),” he said, adding he’s wanted to make the investment for a number of years. “It was student quality and, having been used for 30 years, it’s pretty banged up.

“This is professional quality equipment that we can keep at the auditorium and have as our own. We’ll have access to it at any time.”

Hillard said the instruments are about a dozen of the larger pieces, such as chimes, bass drums and xylophone. In the past, the ASO had to borrow bass drums from ASU, which meant there sometimes were conflicts in scheduling because Albany State needed the equipment for its use.

“Most of our percussionists have the small stuff,” he said. “This is a capital investment in the assets and the future of the association.

“It’ll start arriving soon.”

The acquisition was made possible by the donation from the estate of the late Dr. Paul Peach, a symphony supporter for whom the season’s masterworks concert series has been named.

“We invested the bulk of what we got from Dr. Peach, but we did set a small portion aside for capital,” Fryman said. “The symphony association has people in place who know how to handle that money and who will handle it properly.”

Part of that included investing in equipment that will be used for many years, she said, adding the organization could only “beg and borrow” previously, limiting its programming options. “It’s much simpler and it doesn’t limit us as much,” she said. “It’s a lot of percussion equipment, a great investment as far as the future of the symphony is concerned. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while.”

Knowing the equipment would be available prompted Hillard to program the percussion-heavy program to start the season with a bang.

“The focus of the first show is percussion,” he said. “All the pieces will have prominent percussion parts. … It’ll be very Latin in flavor. When you think of Latin music, you think of vibrant color — castanets and rhythm.”

Fryman said advance tickets sales are “on par” with previous years, but she said the ASO is attempting to ramp up its promotions, including increasing the organization’s presence on social media.

“We want to encourage people to purchase ahead of time,” she said. “We’re really trying to promote the 9ticket) packages now. It does behoove you to buy the packages because you do save.”

Season ticket packages range from $89 (the four masterworks performances) to $230 (reserved seating at the masterworks, the two chamber concerts and the social Conductor’s Circles conducted after the concerts). Tickets for individual masterworks concerts range from $10 (students) to $25-$35 (adults), $10, students, and $20, adults, for the chamber concerts, and $20 for the post-masterworks Conductor’s Circle.