Percussionist Ward Spangler's red hair makes him easy to spot on the Berkeley Symphony stage, but you may find it difficult to find him tonight amidst the raft of instruments that will surround him in Elliot Carter's What Next? The 17 instruments he'll be playing tonight include marimba, cymbals, gongs, bass drum, tom toms, jumbo wood block, piccolo snare drum, brake drums, cow bells, thunder sheet, a trash can and lionÿs roar (a drum with a string attached to the head, which makes its characteristic roar when the player slides his hand along the string).
A van is almost a given for percussionists, who must haul a vast assemblage of equipment to most jobs, and whether for rehearsals or performances, they are among the first musicians to arrive and the last to leave. This is especially true in groups like the Berkeley Symphony that perform a fair amount of contemporary music. "The exploration of percussion sounds," observes Ward, "has played a major role in contemporary music and served as a bridge between acoustic and electronic music."
Ward got his first drum set when he was 12, and when he started at Alameda High School he joined both the band and the jazz band and started playing with outside rock and jazz groups, including a free jazz group called Dr. Zuckercandle and the Mormon Pigmies. At Cal State Hayward he joined the band, percussion ensemble and contemporary music ensemble and studied with Jerry Neff, Danny Montoro and Jack Van Geem. "I was turned on by seeing people work so hard," remembers Ward, "and realized that if I wanted to be a professional musician, I had to start working hard too."
Over the years he has collected a huge amount of equipment. Often he buys an instrument because it's needed in a work he's playing, but sometimes he'll just buy something because he feels he's going to need it. The most unusual instrument in his collection is a boom bass—a long stick with a spring on the bottom and two cymbals, a tambourine and a wood block attached. "Itÿs a clown thing," says Ward. "It makes things clang and jingle. You pound it on the ground with one hand and play the stuff with the other."
Asked if he has a specialty among the many instruments that make up the percussion family, Ward says he hasn't gone that way. "What's extremely important about playing orchestral music is that you learn to play all of the different families: drum set, keyboard, percussion, timpani, drums, cymbals, etc. I'm discovering that composers are writing more and more virtuostic parts."
In addition to the Berkeley Symphony, Ward is principal percussionist with the Fremont Symphony and Oakland East Bay Symphony, and a member of the Marin Symphony. He also plays the Cabrillo Music Festival each summer and is an active freelancer around the Bay Area. He lives in Oakland with his wife, violinist Debbie, and their two daughters, Lindsay and Cara.
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