Bel Canto composer Jimmy Lopez heavily features our Lyric Opera Percussion section who fly from instrument to instrument banging, bowing, tickling, whapping with super ball mallets, and coaxing out sounds ranging in timbre from eerie to exotic. In some cases they are being asked to play instruments in unusual, unconventional ways.
From left to right: Principal Percussionist Mike Green with rain stick and whistling tube, Rich Janicki holding the cuica (a friction drum which makes a high pitched laughing sound), Eric Millstein with a bowed waterphone and Assistant Principal Percussionist Doug Waddell with the lion’s roar.