Spotlight on: Rob Knopper When did your interest in percussion begin? I remember there being drums and so many musical instruments around the house just because instead of a finger painting station or whatever normal people have, there was a keyboard and a drumset that was such an elementary version that the cymbals are literally glued to the stands. I really started doing drum set lessons when I was in fourth grade...I guess it was sixth or seventh grade where I started playing in band. Before my freshman year of high school when I decided that I really wanted to do something that summer, I applied for Interlochen(Center for the Arts) – which has come full circle because now I teach there sometimes – for jazz drum set. And they said “no, you’re not really good enough” and rejected my application. I even applied to Blue Lake, which is like Interlochen but a little more for beginners – and I didn’t get in for drumset, but they said “Okay, you can do band.” At that point I went to Blue Lake, and I loved band. I went to Interlochen for orchestra and band the next summer. High school, and Interlochen, was when I first started playing Delécluse, which is what I’m playing on my album. Delécluse wrote the most popular snare drum etudes that percussionists play. You play it for high school orchestra auditions, you play it for college auditions, you play it for summer festival auditions in college and grad school, it’s on every professional audition list. Even at my Met audition, etude 9 was on my audition. Out of the twelve, I’ve played probably half of them for auditions. You just mentioned your album, “delécluse: douze études for snare drum”. What inspired you to record this project? I’ve been playing these etudes as long as I’ve been a percussionist. I’ve been playing them relatively constantly since Interlochen. They’re short pieces – around a minute and a half each – and there are twelve of them. But they’re so unbelievably dense that you can just work and work and work on any one of them and you end up having this baggage with each measure. You put so much dedication and emotion into figuring out how to practice these and how to perform them. 88 BLEEP
I read somewhere that you’ve said not to practice until you get it right, but to practice until you can’t get it wrong. Exactly. When you’re a student, those types of things are just rattling around your brain constantly, and you’re continually searching for new ideas and input on how to approach your process. As long as you’re not getting the results you want, it’s like you’re hungry in the desert. You’re looking for anything that can feed your process of “I might be one of the too many people who don’t get to play this instrument for the rest of my life.” It’s exactly why I wanted to start this project. Going back to high school and college, I was so dedicated to this and I worked so hard and I was always finding that there was not enough information. Traditionally you have one lesson a week, and it’s so great. You get immediate feedback and your teacher shapes your playing over time, and there’s nothing that could replace that interaction with a professional. And just like we’re seeing in so many other industries, people are taking the initiative to start spreading the word about their approach, and the information they’ve gathered over their careers, as free online content for whoever’s interested. If I’m going to write a blog post about how to record yourself, it’s not going to be to hook somebody in to sell my album. It’s going to be because I know what it’s like to be a 15 year old who doesn’t know how to play that measure. You’ve been with the Met since 2011. In terms of overall experience, what’s been the most fun production for you so far? I think for me, La Boheme – where I go on stage and I’m in costume and actually march around on stage - might be the most fun. There are so many fun ones, but that one stands out to me. Because even before you play, you’re up there on top of the platform about to walk down this giant staircase, and you’ve memorized this music – all of which I’m not used to doing while I play. Not only that, but I [have to] use traditional grip and I’ve never really played that before Boheme, so I had to learn on the fly. It’s so much fun, and you’re interacting with the supers (supernumeraries, or actors who help enhance the scene in non-singing roles) in this French town.