Percussion Ensemble

The mission of the Buffalo State Percussion Ensemble is to expose students and the Buffalo community to sophisticated repertoire written or transcribed for percussion instruments. The group commonly makes use of standard percussion instruments such as timpani, mallet keyboard instruments, tom toms, cymbals, and gongs, but also employs sounds generated by found or constructed instruments such as car parts, architectural elements, and household furnishings. 

An emblematic list of composers surveyed by the group includes works by Karel Husa, William Kraft, Warren Benson, Christopher Rouse, Gareth Farr, Frank Zappa, Edgard Varese, Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage and Joan Tower.  The group endeavors to provide students with a learning experience which addresses the performance skills, performance practice, historical context, and compositional appreciation required to represent cutting edge percussion music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.