Timpani player headed to All State Festival

Feb. 18, 2016 | Chris Goudreau
cgoudreau@thereminder.com

East Longmeadow High School senior Mohit Mail will be the only timpanist preforming in the All State Festival’s Concert Band in March. This will be his third time playing timpani with the band.
Reminder Publications photo by Chris Goudreau

EAST LONGMEADOW – Mohit Mali, a 17-year-old East Longmeadow High School (ELHS) senior, will be the only timpanist for the All State Festival’s Concert Band. The festival brings together hundreds of top high school music students from across the state to preform in a variety of musical ensembles.

Mali told Reminder Publications this would be his third year preforming as a timpanist and percussionist for the All State Concert Band.

“[During my] first year, I was really surprised,” he noted. “It’s pretty rare for an underclassman to get in for anything for All-States. My junior year, I would say was really good because it proved it to everyone else as well as me that it wasn’t just a fluke [the year before].”

He continued, “Once you make it [to All State] you’re held to a higher standard in a way.”

Mali said timpani consist of large brass drums and are mostly used for orchestral musical works. In order to play timpani, a musician must have perfect pitch.

“If you’re off by a little bit, everyone will know because everyone else will be in tune and you won’t,” he explained. “Also, you only get one pitch out of your drum at a time and sometimes you have to tune a timpani in the middle of a piece while it’s going on.”

The festival is set to take place March 10 through 12 in Boston and features orchestral performances, a jazz ensemble, chorus, and concert band. The All State Festival would conclude with a concert at Boston Symphony Hall on March 12.

“It’s an amazing accomplishment to be selected three times to All State and Mohit is a naturally gifted, hardworking musician who really makes the groups he plays with sound better,” ELHS Fine Arts Department Chair and Band Director James Kiernan said.

Mali said he’s been playing timpani since he was in seventh grade. Other instruments he plays include piano, guitar, drums, vibraphone and saxophone.

“I’ve also played in the Springfield Symphony Youth Orchestra since the fifth grade and I did timpani there too,” he noted.

Mali said he tries to play music every day and the level of rehearsal for the All State Festival is based on the difficulty of the pieces he will be preforming.

“I’d say it’s more of conditioning to stay in musical shape,” he noted. “I have a vibraphone at home, so I’ll go home turn to just a random page and start playing that.”

Although programs for this year’s All State Festival have yet to be released, Mali said two years ago he preformed on a piece called “Jupiter” – a movement of “The Planets” orchestral suite by English composer Gustav Holst.

Mali said he mostly performs in classical music groups, but has played in other genres such as big band jazz ensembles and rock bands.

He said he also achieved first place in the Massachusetts Drum Championship in seventh and eighth grade. The completion mostly featured rock-based drums and Mali wrote and preformed an original composition one year.

Mali said he first fell in love with performing music while in middle school.

“You have to initiate your [love for music] on your own,” he noted.

He said he plans to study either computer science or mechanics in college and minor in music.

“I don’t see music going away for me ever,” he noted. “I didn’t apply to colleges with music majors, but I’m definitely going to do music while at college.”

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