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CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2013 The implement in Zubin Hathi\u2019s hand when he was born wasn\u2019t a drumstick or mallet. It was a tennis racket. <\/p>\n
The son of a tennis pro and tennis shop owner \u2014 and a skilled tennis player himself \u2014 Hathi spent many years growing up in Roanoke, Va. imagining he was headed for the courts, not the world\u2019s great concert halls. <\/p>\n
The latter, though, is where he ended up, and where he appears destined to stay. The new principal timpanist of the Cleveland Orchestra, Hathi has completed the transformation, swapping a potential future on grass or clay for a life at Severance Music Center. <\/p>\n
\u201cI never envisioned myself making music my career,\u201d Hathi said in the apartment at One University Circle, where he\u2019s lived since his appointment in May. \u201cBut I\u2019m a singularly focused person. Once I pick up something, I pretty much forget about everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forgetting about everything else won\u2019t be required in Hathi\u2019s new post. Still, in a chair at the back of the orchestra, from which Hathi said \u201cyou can see pretty much everything, all the time,\u201d his singular ability to focus might come in handy. <\/p>\n
In the principal seat last occupied by Paul Yancich, who stepped down in 2023 after 42 years, Hathi will play a prominent role in a great deal and wide variety of music, often standing out or providing a foundation in concertos and major symphonies. Sometimes, too, he\u2019s likely to perform as a soloist. <\/p>\n
None of that daunts Hathi, in part because one of his teachers was Yancich himself. In his master\u2019s degree studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Hathi said Yancich \u201cgave me confidence. He made me believe in myself. It\u2019s so easy in this field to feel small, like the odds are stacked against you, but he makes you feel like the greatest person in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n
Neither was Yancich Hathi\u2019s only teacher in Cleveland. Another was Marc Damoulakis, the orchestra\u2019s principal percussionist since 2014 and Hathi\u2019s new colleague. Indeed, it was a \u201cmind-blowing\u201d encounter with Damoulakis that drew Hathi to Cleveland and inspired him to emulate the \u201creally specific system\u201d of training he sensed behind the percussionist\u2019s playing.<\/p>\n
Hathi gravitated to percussion \u2014 away from tennis, violin, and piano, which he\u2019d also studied for a time \u2014 in part because percussionists are always playing something different. Damoulakis, though, exemplified a whole new level of versatility. \u201cHis ease with so many instruments, it was something I\u2019d never seen before,\u201d Hathi said. <\/p>\n
Hathi, in turn, left a similar impression on Damoulakis. As a student at CIM, where he attended after earning a degree at the Curtis Institute of Music, Hathi was one \u201chis teachers never had to worry about,\u201d Damoulakis said, noting that Hathi\u2019s kind nature, hard work ethic and raw talent all but guaranteed success. <\/p>\n
It probably didn\u2019t feel that way to Hathi himself \u2014 at least not always. <\/p>\n
Although Hathi enjoyed early victories, earning principal positions with the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, his first two auditions in Cleveland were unsuccessful. Only on his third attempt, when Hathi was by then a known quantity, did he at last win over music director Franz Welser-Most. <\/p>\n
\u201cHaving people around me wishing me well, it was good for my mental state,\u201d Hathi said, recalling that after he learned he\u2019d won, \u201cI kind of short-circuited there for a few minutes. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this is the job I would get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking back, there were likely signs, even during his tennis days, that Hathi was a musician at heart, and perhaps a timpanist in particular. A close observer might even have detected a leaning toward Cleveland. <\/p>\n
Studying percussion, with its myriad instruments, Hathi always gravitated to the timpani. Seated amid a semicircle of tuned kettledrums, \u201cI felt like I could execute difficult music more naturally, and my instincts for playing in an ensemble were better,\u201d Hathi said. <\/p>\n
By then, too, Hathi was already a fan of the famed \u201cCleveland sound,\u201d and specifically, of its timpani section. Listening to recordings of the orchestra, the full-bodied or exceptionally delicate work of Yancich and his predecessors \u201calways spoke to me, even when I was a younger kid,\u201d Hathi said. <\/p>\n
Now Hathi himself is the one making that sound, a model to the next generation of timpanists. Realizing this, Hathi\u2019s parents are \u201cstill kind of pinching themselves.\u201d Tennis, meanwhile, has fallen almost completely by the wayside, replaced by running, hiking and rock climbing. <\/p>\n
Not that he needs any other hobbies or pursuits. Now that he\u2019s in the Cleveland Orchestra, music alone is enough. <\/p>\n
No matter if a piece is brand-new or a warhorse, one he\u2019s never seen or played a thousand times, \u201cIt\u2019s never the same thing twice,\u201d Hathi said. \u201cWhatever is in front of me is my favorite thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Cleveland Orchestra\u2019s next concert is its \u201cHalloween Spooktacular,\u201d 1 p.m. & 4 p.m. Oct. 19 at Severance Music Center, 11001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Tickets, $19-$33, are available at <\/i>clevelandorchestra.com<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cleveland.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CLEVELAND, Ohio \u2013 The implement in Zubin Hathi\u2019s hand when he was born wasn\u2019t a drumstick or mallet. It was a tennis racket. The son of a tennis pro and tennis shop owner \u2014 and a skilled tennis player himself \u2014 Hathi spent many years growing up in Roanoke, Va. imagining he was headed for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2092965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2092965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092966,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092965\/revisions\/2092966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2092965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2092965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2092965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}