Andy Kocher is a fourth-year percussionist who performed Keiko Abe’s Prism Rhapsody for the Concordia Band’s spring tour.
Kocher stumbled into the world of percussion in fifth grade where his teacher had him, and other students, trying musical instruments such as a trombone, saxophone, and percussion.
However, Kocher was not given that choice after playing the bongos with his teacher.
“We sat together and I was supposed to be doing what she was doing. After that, she didn’t even let me try the trombone and sax. So, I was kind of stuck with percussion,” he said.
While Kocher was involved in music for a majority of his life, he didn’t plan to major in percussion performance. He originally planned to attend University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire as a computer science major, but changed his mind three weeks before he was supposed to move in.
“It just didn’t feel right,” he said.
Instead, Kocher attended Concordia College as a music and business entrepreneurship major, but he did not enjoy his business classes as much as his music classes. He switched to Percussion performance last Sept. and plans to use his flex year to gain his lesson credits. He also wants to prepare to go to graduate school for percussion performance.
Kocher studied under Dr. David Eyler for 2 years until his retirement in 2023. Eyler was the former director of percussion who taught many percussionists in Minnesota, including Kocher’s brother.
Currently, Kocher currently studies with Dr. Robert Palomeque.
“Dr. Palomeque has really taught me how to push myself and do some things that haven’t been done before, how to do that in a successful way, how to research music, and—even when there’s something really difficult—how to play it in a way that’s musical and affecting and not just like, ‘Oh my God, it’s a billion notes,’ but to try to make people feel something, hopefully.”
Kocher’s involvement on campus includes being part of the percussion studio and being the vice president of the Concordia Band.
Most of his job as vice president is scheduling and talking to people so he can figure out what people like and don’t like.
“It’s really hard to make music if you’re not in a group where you feel comfortable or like you’re having a good time, so it’s been a way for me to, hopefully, make sure it’s a good group for other people,” he said. “I think it is a matter of realizing what I care about with music at Concordia, and then advocating for that. And also recognizing why other people are there, why other people like it.”
Kocher is also a percussion manager in the percussion studio where he can experiment with his playing and spend time with other musicians and friends.
Describing his experience with the studio, he said, “It’s really fun to get to play duets or quartets with people and they’re all my friends. It’s not just somebody I’m playing music with. We get lunch together, we hang out outside of anything music related. There’s also a lot of different kinds of music going on in our percussion studio and it’s a group of people that really wants to explore new and different things and everybody kind of wants to dive and the stuff they’re interested in, and everybody’s interested in different stuff.”
When Kocher performs he rarely uses sheet music. He said he started playing from memory as a necessity because there are too many pages in the music he plays. Because he can’t have either 10 music stands or turn pages easily, he found it impossible to read and play music at the same time.
Kocher only started playing from memory last year. “It kind of got to a point where I was like ‘okay, I can’t really play with the music there.’ So, it was just a bit of a slow process of ‘I’m just gonna try to play this page without looking at it,’ and then I could get that down and then it was just a matter of doing that with all the other pages.”
Notably, Kocher placed second in the open division of the Minn. Percussive Arts Society Marimba Competition. He was also preparing for his junior recital and was in need of another piece, so he took the opportunity to enter the competition on short notice.
Upon reflecting on his experience in the competition, Kocher said, “getting ready for that competition was something that pushed me to really enjoy playing Marimba and explore more difficult music and how to make difficult music sound good and not just sound difficult.”
