Even several years later, Susan C. Cook still remembers it vividly. The director of the Mead Witter School of Music was giving a talk to a group of donors, hoping to (literally) drum up support for the as-yet-unconstructed Hamel Music Center. To set the musical mood, she introduced her guests: Professor of Percussion Tony Di Sanza and a group of his students, who immediately launched into some rapid-fire Brazilian drumming.
“The crowd went wild,” Cook recalls. “Once they saw Tony and his students playing and swaying through these really complicated rhythms, I didn’t have to say anything.”
Di Sanza’s musical performances tend to have that effect on people. Whether he’s furiously wielding his mallets behind a marimba, or striking his palms on a Brazilian atabaque, Di Sanza exudes a hypnotic energy, like a man containing cultural multitudes. As the only professor of percussion on the faculty at UW-Madison, Di Sanza has mastered, performed and taught a wide variety of percussion styles from around the world. He has also built his own musical instruments and specialized musical tools, like a triangle trigger that lets a musician play a triangle or set of finger cymbals without having to hold either in their hands.
“He’s a party of one,” says Cook. “He has to know a wide variety of instruments and have a much bigger-picture view than some of his colleagues. Fortunately, he has big ears and he’s given to new ideas and practices.”
Di Sanza and his wife, Professor of Piano Jessica Johnson, are beginning their third decade with the Mead Witter School of Music, having refused multiple offers from other institutions. In July, Di Sanza received a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorship, acknowledging the long-term success he’s enjoyed at UW-Madison. That success is based on, among other things, expanding the School’s curriculum to incorporate global musical styles from Brazil to Cuba and the Middle East.
“Being diverse is part of my personality and interest,” says Di Sanza. “Percussion, by its nature, is a diverse field. Percussion is in nearly every culture.”
Di Sanza’s path to international recognition began in junior high school in Ohio. Over the course of half a year, he says, he went from being the self-described “worst band student in the eighth grade” to a percussion devotee. He can even pinpoint the precise moment of his musical epiphany—playing the timpani on Frank Erickson’s “Blue Ridge Orchestra” at a December band concert.
“This is it,” he remembers thinking. “I knew I wanted music in my life.”
By tenth grade, he had thrown himself into the art of percussion and was teaching young students himself. In the early 1990s, as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he earned an invitation to tour Japan with the famous marimbist Keiko Abe, a performer with whom he’d eventually collaborate and record.
Each year, Di Sanza teaches about 15 music students, largely in one-on-one sessions; every other year, he also teaches a class on percussion pedagogy, grooming the next generation of percussion teachers
In the classroom and studio, Di Sanza prefers to function as a coach rather than a traditional teacher.
“The last thing I want is for students to graduate playing like I do, with my musical interests exclusively,” he explains. “I want them to find their own voice. Teaching lessons is about a lifetime spent gathering experiences. The students should be learning their lessons in the field.”
Di Sanza doesn’t spend much time behind a drum set at this point in his career. Instead, he splits his time between solo work, largely with marimba and multiple percussion instruments, or as a member of groups like Ensemble Duniya and the newly formed Unity Duo as well as the Madison Symphony Orchestra, where he gets to explore diverse musical traditions. Ensembles are where he’s happiest.
“I love working with other people in a musical setting,” he says. “I like the very personalized notion of the small group, the collegial vibe, the friendship you feel.”
He’s rediscovered that in his latest creative effort, a trio project with two of his frequent collaborators, Professor of Trombone Mark Hetzler and Professor of Tuba Tom Curry. The group just released its latest CD, Don’t Look Down, in early September.
“I challenge anyone to find another tuba, trombone and percussion trio,” laughs Di Sanza. Mixing brass, percussion and synthesizers, this project is about pushing boundaries in uncharted directions.
‘When a string quartet gets together, their first question is typically, ‘What do we want to play that’s already in the repertoire?’” says Di Sanza. “Our initial meetings were much more, ‘What’s the concept and what are we going to do with it?’”
Don’t Look Down also keys into his lifelong love of improvisation, allowing him to draw from everything he’s learned in his long career.
“This was the perfect project for me at the perfect time,” Di Sanza says. “I didn’t know I needed to be doing it until I started doing it.”