This tiny instrument stars as Diablo Symphony takes listeners to Brazil

While it might seem like the humblest of instruments, the tambourine is actually among music’s most cosmopolitan percussion implements. Known by more than at least two dozen different names, from Indonesia’s rapa’i and Egypt’s mazhar to India’s daff and Ireland’s bodhrán, the round frame drum plays an essential role accompanying rituals, celebrations, and dances across the globe.

Brian Rice, the Oakland percussionist devoted to the Brazilian tambourine, or pandeiro, felt like the time was ripe to give the instrument its due, an ambition that comes to fruition May 14 at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts. Conducted by Matilda Hofman, the Diablo Symphony Orchestra presents the world premiere of São Paulo composer Felipe Senna’s “Concerto for Pandeiro and Orchestra.”

A co-director of the Berkeley Choro Ensemble with flutist Jane Lenoir, Rice “always thought there could or should be a pandeiro concerto,” he said. Senna had already collaborated with the Choro Ensemble and when Rice approached him about the concerto idea, “he was sort of intrigued. We got together when I was down in Brazil and brought out five or six different tambourines, a riq, and Mexican and Galician panderos. I thought we could play around with all of them.”

The May 14 program, “Sounds of the Americas: Sounds of Brazil,” also features the world premiere of Jean Ahn’s “Many Hues of Green,” a Diablo Valley Symphony commission celebrating the ensemble’s 60th anniversary, and Darius Milhaud’s “Le Bœuf sur le Toit” (accompanying Charlie Chaplin’s “The Adventurer,” the 1917 short film for which Milhaud originally wrote the piece).

The Southern hemisphere side of the bill includes Clarice Assad’s “Brazilian Fanfare” (2005) and “The Brazilian Choro Suite” (2017), a three-movement piece by reed player Harvey Wainapel and Rio-born guitarist Ricardo Peixoto, who are also members of the Berkeley Choro Ensemble. Rice and his ensemble bandmates will join the symphony for the suite, which was arranged and orchestrated by Felipe Senna.

Devoted to the virtuosic Afro-Brazilian instrumental style that has undergone numerous creative revivals since emerging in late 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, the Berkeley Choro Ensemble has forged deep bonds with leading Brazilian choro musicians and composers over the past decade, like esteemed Brazilian pianist/composer Léa Freire. When the group was looking for someone to create string arrangements for several original tunes, she recommended Senna.

The founder and artistic director of the groundbreaking Câmaranóva ensemble, he plunged into the assignment weaving three Berkeley Choro Ensemble originals into “The Brazilian Choro Suite.” The piece premiered at a 2017 Echo Chamber Orchestra concert at San Anselmo’s First Presbyterian Church.

“Harvey and Ricardo’s originals were beautiful to start with, and Felipe’s lush arranging with strings made them that much more striking,” Rice said.

One of Brazil’s leading contemporary composers, Senna embraced the challenge of Rice’s commission (which was covered partly by a GoFundMe campaign). In a country known for percussionists with fluency in a multitudinous menagerie of drums and sundry metallic implements, Senna was inspired by the dogged focus required for the project.

“The percussion universe is so vast, and it’s so rare that a percussionist gets to say, ‘I’m doing this,’” Senna said. “Brian can achieve a level of specialism not possible if you need to play 150 instruments.”

Usually held like a plate and played horizontally, pandeiros have metal jingles along the frame, but produce a different timbre than tambourines, where “the jingles are splayed apart more loosely to ring more,” Rice said. “On the pandeiro the jingles are two concave parts facing each other, like a hi-hat cymbal, and are tight in the frame to produce sharp, crisp sound.”

Determined to avoid the trap of “having pandeiro in front of orchestra doing all these amazing things and the orchestra is dull,” Senna wanted as wide an array of sounds and pitches as possible, he said on a recent video call from his São Paulo studio.

“The challenge is how do you create this sense of dialogue between an instrument and an orchestra,” Senna said. “You want the space to show the technique, the circus part, but it needs to be a conversation. A lot can be done by rubbing the skin, muting the jingles, working only the jingles, playing a glissando with the skin, changing the pitch. Brian does it all amazingly.”

Senna’s isn’t the first concerto for pandeiro. Caito Marcondes, a pandeiro maestro who’s collaborated with Turtle Island Quartet, wrote a concerto for pandeiro and orchestra that premiered in São Paulo last May (performed by Rice’s teacher, Luiz Guello).

“When I first fell in love with the pandeiro I saw the potential, that it could be played on any type of  music,” Rice said. “Since then I’ve used it in Irish and Middle Eastern band and funk and jazz settings. It’s great for odd meters. But a concerto? This is really unusual in the pandeiro world.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at [email protected].

DIABLO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

presents the world premiere of Concerto for Pandeiro and Orchestra, by Felipe Senna

When: 2 p.m. May 14

Where: Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek

Tickets: $40; 925-295-1400, www.lesherartscenter.org