Leigh Howard Stevens is a marimba artist best known for developing, codifying, and promoting the Stevens technique or Musser-Stevens grip, a method of independent four-mallet marimba performance based on the Musser grip.
Studies
Leigh Howard Stevens studied under some of the most prominent percussion teachers and performers of his time, including jazz drummer Joe Morello, and marimbist Vida Chenoweth, with whom he studied in New Zealand the summer after his freshman year of college. LHS pursued his college studies at the Eastman School of Music planning to be a drum set player. Stevens recalls, "I noticed when I got to Eastman that the techniques I was using--the one-handed roll, rotary strokes, doing Baroque trills with one hand, two-part Bach inventions, things like that--got a lot of attention. Other people seemed to think that I had a lot of talent on the marimba. I gradually began to realize that I had the potential of being a much better marimba player than I had of becoming a world-class drum set player." Stevens promptly switched to concert percussion, studied with John Beck and received a Performer's Certificate.
Method of Movement for Marimba
During the 1970s, LHS began writing down his thoughts and exercises he invented in order to facilitate the mastery of this new technique. The result was his pedagogical treatise Method of Movement for Marimba, first published in 1979 by his own company, Marimba Productions. Method of Movement for Marimba describes Stevens' method for holding marimba mallets, efficient utilization of motion, and includes over 500 musical exercises for the student. Method of Movement was the first textbook to fully describe a complete method for holding and playing with 4 mallets. LHS came up with the technique after learning several other grips and considers his technique an outgrowth of the Musser grip. The Stevens technique is defined by a vertical hand position, pivoting around either unused mallet, and moving the end of the inside mallet through the palm for larger intervals.
Stroke Types
Single Independent Strokes: the ability to strike single strokes without moving the unused mallet held in that hand. Single Alternating Strokes: executed as if they were alternating single independent strokes, these strokes consist of discrete, side to side rockings of the hand. Double Vertical Strokes: a stroke that produces two pitches simultaneously.. Double Lateral Strokes: single motions that produce two successive pitches. It begins as a double vertical stroke but goes through a split second metamorphosis where one mallet strikes before the other.
Performance
Stevens' performance at the first PASIC in Rochester, New York, in 1976 was a seminal event for all in attendance. For the first time, many percussion performers and teachers were seeing someone performing with a quasi-Musser grip but with an unprecedented degree of flexibility. Stevens was not attempting to revolutionize the percussion world; rather, he was merely performing in what he thought was a natural method for the marimba. LHS continues to be an active performer and clinician worldwide and has appeared at a dozen Percussive Arts Society International Conventions since 1976, and served as Professor of Marimba at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, from 1997-2004. From 1980 to the present, he has held a three-week Summer Marimba Seminar in Ocean Grove, New Jersey where an average of 30 students from around the world come participate in an intensive study of music and the Stevens’ technique with LHS himself. On November 10, 2006, Stevens was officially inducted into the Percussive Arts SocietyHall of Fame during the 2006 PASIC in Austin, Texas. He is an alumnus of Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey and was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame.
Marimba Productions, Inc.
Stevens started his own publishing company, Marimba Productions, in 1979 because he could not find a publishing company for his MOM manuscript. Still in business today, Marimba Productions Inc. comprises Malletech instruments and mallets, Keyboard Percussion Publications, and Resonator Records. Marimba Productions Inc. also includes acquisitions: Music Project, M.Baker Publications, Percussion Arts and Studio 4 Music.
Major pieces written for or commissioned by Leigh Howard Stevens
Jacob Druckman:
Reflections on the Nature of Water1
Matthew Harris:
Potpourri2
Raymond Helble:
Grand Fantasy in C Major Toccata Fantasy in E-flat minor Preludes for Marimba
Concerto for Orchestra and Marimba Concerto for Marimba and Percussion Ensemble Movement for Marimba and Harpsichord Two Movements for Marimba and String Quartet Duo Concertante
David Maslanka:
Variations on Lost Love
William Penn:
Four Preludes for Marimba
Roger Reynolds:
Autumn Island1
Joseph Schwantner:
Velocites1
John Serry, Jr.:
Rhapsody for Marimba, "Night Rhapsody" West Side Suite
Gordon Stout:
Beads of Glass Diptych No. 4 Route 666
Christopher Stowens:
Atamasco and the Wooden Shalter2 1 commissioned by a consortium of William Moersch, Gordon Stout, and Stevens
