By Troy D. Sides

The hands of Apryl Ott, foreground, and Morgan Gagliardi fly across the surface of a marimba, one of the many instruments to be used during the Percussion Ensemble. Ott, Gagliardi, and five other Mesa students will perform the annual event April 2 in the Moss Performing Arts Center.

Morgan Gagliardi is pretty good with pots and pans.
In fact, Gagliardi and six other Mesa State classmates will perform in the Moss Performing Arts Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. April 2 with these pots and pans. This, however, will not be a culinary showcase. Gagliardi and her classmates are members of the Mesa State percussion ensemble.
“You can make a percussion instrument out of anything,” Gagliardi said, looking over one of her “instruments” made up almost entirely of empty paint cans. “It gets a little complicated sometimes too, and there are times where I’m just like, ‘Why the hell are we using pots and pans?’”
Stranger things have come out of the percussion studio, however.
“I’ve even used basketballs before,” said Apryl Ott, Gagliardi’s fellow performer. “I’ve also used a stool, galvanized buckets, and paper to create percussion.”
Ott is a second-year percussion major, but apparently youth holds no sway on her abilities for composition. For the ensemble on April 2, Ott composed one of the pieces to be performed, titled “Rose Bush,” and she will also be playing nine different instruments. The event may as well be taking place on “Apryl” 2.
“I’ve spent so many hours practicing,” Ott said, “and just to be able to perform the finished product is going to be amazing.”
To the tune of cultural pieces that span from Mexico to Japan, Mesa State performers will be playing such percussion instruments as the timpani, xylophone, chimes, conga, clave, and maraca. And, yes, pots and pans too.
“It’s really upbeat,” Gagliardi said. “Most of them are really fast-paced pieces.”
Gagliardi comes from a percussion-loaded family, which is the main reason she got into percussion in the first place (“That, and I absolutely hated the sound of the flute,” she said). Her great uncle, Frank Gagliardi, has played with the likes of Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong.
“You listen to the song, ‘What a Wonderful World,’ by Louis Armstrong,” she said, “and you know the drum you hear throughout? Yeah, that’s my great uncle.”
Gagliardi leans not so much toward the drum as she does the marimba, a gigantic, piano-looking instrument loaded with wooden “keys” that make different pitches when struck with a foam-covered drumstick, of which she holds four, two in each hand.
“I love it,” she said, looking over her marimba, her favorite instrument. “But I’ll also be playing five other instruments during the performance, which is why we began practice for this show at the start of Christmas break. We want to be sure that we’re gonna have all this stuff down by showtime.”
“The pieces we have are really difficult,” Ott said. “But all the people that are in it, we all hang together outside of class, and it’s a lot easier to work with people that you like.”
Far from being Gagliardi’s or Ott’s first ensemble performance, it is the difficulty and variety of the pieces for “Blockbusters,” the name of the show, that has created the buzz in the air.
“It’s a real chance for everyone to see what we can do,” Gagliardi said. “We’re kinda hidden back here, not too many people know about us. But we’re not just band geeks, so come see what we can do.”
“We want people to come away with a good experience of it,” Ott said, “and to perhaps have a new appreciation for this sort of musical art. There’s not a lot of support for it, not in this town.”
Not that any lack of recognition or support slows down any of these percussionists.
“It’s our passion,” Ott said. “And it’s amazing to know that I can succeed at something and share something I’m passionate about with this world, and that I’ll have this ability with me for the rest of my life. Provided my hands don’t get chopped off.”
Or that no one steals her pots and pans.
Tickets for the event are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $5 for students, and are available at the door or in advance by calling the box office at 970-248-1604.