Marimba Magic

Dr. Fisher plays the marimba

The sound of a marimba, how to describe it?

It’s like the sound a light rain of marshmallows makes when it falls on an angel’s halo.

It’s like the first spring notes of a bird made out of silver.

If jellyfish sang opera on the moon, it might sound something like this.

Trap a dream inside a hollow golden sphere and then listen to the ringing tones it makes as it bounces around inside.

If God has a windchime dangling from the rafters of His front porch, it probably sounds like a marimba.

At least that’s what it sounds like when it is being played by a master of the instrument, and such a person is Dr. Russell Fisher, Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Bridgeport.

Dr. Fisher entranced a spellbound audience with his performance of “12 Preludes for Marimba,” a sequence of haunting soundscapes composed by contemporary classical musician Juri Seo.  Dr. Fisher recently received his Doctorate of Musical Arts in percussion performance from Yale University, and you can tell that he’s been doing his homework.  Holding two mallets in each hand, his arms waved over the keys of the marimba like a magician’s, the mallets bouncing with astonishing precision to summon effects from the instrument that sometimes sounded like wind and rain, sometimes like sunlight on snow, sometimes like wildflowers blooming into life and sometimes like the same flowers shriveling into soft decay.  The tones of avant garde marimba music echoed through the Littlefield Recital Hall of UB’s Arnold Bernhard Center, filling our ears and resonating through our bones and soft tissue and transmitting their otherworldly vibrations into the recesses of our minds.

But in addition to the sensual experience of the music itself, Dr. Fisher explained that Seo’s “12 Preludes” is structured around a series of literary and musical references, reformulating them and reinterpreting them in ways that acknowledge the past while also creating new forms and new meanings.

Dr. Fisher interspersed his performance with descriptions of how Seo’s Preludes incorporate thematic and tonal elements not only from other composers like Bach, Schubert, and Schumann, but also from Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain and the poetry of Heinrich Heine.  This background knowledge about the composition enriched the experience of listening to the music, opening out new dimensions of beauty.  

I have to admit that I didn’t really know what a marimba was a week ago.  If you asked me, I would have guessed that maybe it’s a kind of dance.  I thought the thing on the stage was a xylophone (heretical error).  But now I love the marimba.  

Even the word, “Marimba” has an infectiously musical sound that brings joy to my heart.

Say it with me: Marimba.

Marimba.

Marimba.

Learn more about the University of Bridgeport's Music Department.