The Good 5 Cent Cigar

Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrew Brennen Freshman Jim Hammett stands with a few of the university's broken instruments.

02/21/08 - If a band at the University of Rhode Island sounds a little out of tune, it's probably not the musicians' fault. Many of the school's percussion instruments are in poor shape - dented, missing parts and sometimes held together with duct tape.

One of the school's marimbas, a piano-like instrument played with mallets, has chipped keys that keep students from playing the notes perfectly in tune.

"We try to fix things with what we have," said Jim Hammett, a freshman percussionist majoring in music education. "These instruments are not up to the quality you'd expect at a college level."

Music graduate student Will Grueb said if two ensembles are meeting at the same time and they both need a tambourine, they have to work out a system of sharing the school's only one.

"There's just not enough stuff to go around," he said.

Grueb also said practice pianos that are out of tune and with broken keys, a lack of space for rehearsing and holding lessons and a constant problem called "sound bleeding," in which many different musicians practicing different songs can be heard at the same time from a single location.

Music Department Chairman Ronald Lee acknowledged this problem.

"If you're practicing a piece and another person is practicing it at the other end of the hall, you could have a duet almost," he said.

Lee said that many of the department's problems, such as the sound-bleeding, are because of the size of the facility. He said the Fine Arts Center was built to accommodate 75 music majors. Today there are more than 170 music majors using instruments regularly, as well as 4,000 students enrolled in music courses for non-majors and general education classes, such as music appreciation.

Lee's department also deals with a leaky roof, which is a serious problem for areas that house very expensive grand pianos.

"We could use a new building," Lee said. "This one is just tired, worn out and too small."

The building is on the URI docket for renovation within four or five years. Lee said the department is also engaged in a national search for a new faculty member to accommodate the growing number of students.

"We're making all kinds of plans and hoping for the best," he said.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools