Photo by Audrey Powell/The Choate News
It takes a lot of courage to play an original piece in front of the entire Choate student body. Sam Markowitz ’17, who you might remember from his outstanding performance on the marimba at the last all-school meeting, is not only a percussionist in the jazz band, orchestra, and wind ensemble, but also a leader to those around him.
Markowitz began percussion in middle school when he chose band as an elective. “I wanted to play saxophone, but when I tried to blow into an instrument, I couldn’t make a coherent noise,” he recalled. He then tried percussion and explained, “I’ve loved it since”.
Markowitz came to Choate as a new sophomore. “The main reason I actually came to Choate was because I wanted better music experience,” he said. For his first two years, Markowitz took part in the orchestra playing the bass, drums, and cymbals. This year Markowitz began the timpani. In addition to his classical experience, Markowitz has been playing the pongas and bongos in the jazz band. “I have been trying to expand a lot more,” he said regarding his new steel pan lessons. Markowitz’s favorite experience is playing in the jazz band. “For me, music is one of those things where when I’m feeling stressed or I’m just having a rough day, it’s something I can go back to and have a lot of fun with just to center myself. That’s the role I want it to have going into the future.”
“Composing my own music is something I had been interested in for a while,” he explained. Markowitz completed a summer program that his roommate previously attended college for composition. “He was telling me about a lot of things, and honestly it just seemed really cool to me. I got more and more experience with these contemporary percussion ensemble pieces, these very weird pieces. Those were some of the most fun I had playing outright, period.” Markowitz started composing himself, but nothing seemed to work out. This summer he forced himself to start a piece and finish it. “I just had a month of grinding and a lot of improvising and coming up with ideas,” he said. This is how the marimba piece students heard came to be.
“It really gives you a new perspective when you do it. Once you write something and go back to some piece you played, you can look at it in a different way and see what the composer is trying to get across. You can see what they are trying to do. You can really express that in your own playing,” he said.
Markowitz is an inventive musician who is respected by his peers and who dives into his percussion headfirst, said Arielle Landau ’17, who plays in the orchestra with Markowitz.
“He usually knows what he’s doing, and he helps out the other percussion players who are new this year,” said Landau. “He is just a good musician because he follows dynamics.”
