ZADAR’S SEA ORGAN

IN grade school, Rob Klieger knew he wanted to play percussion in the school band. Now he’s the principal percussionist for the Santa Fe Opera orchestra during the summer and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra during the fall, winter, and spring. “A percussionist is really a logistics manager,” he says, “and a tinkerer and a mechanic, to keep the instruments in good repair. Once all that’s taken care of, we get to be a musician for a while.” For Klieger, the oddity of percussion comes from the nature of the job itself. “We play hundreds and hundreds of different instruments, and you have to know the different qualities and playing techniques for each of them,” he says. “Percussionists love challenges, and many contemporary composers love to provide them. I once played in a piece where I had to play the slide whistle. Normally, that would be no big deal but, here, I had to play in unison with the first violins, which was insanely hard.” Klieger’s craziest-ever musical apparatus? A 12-gauge shotgun, which he fired onstage at the end of a John Corigliano piece called Circus Maximus.

Corigliano’s Lord of Cries premieres at the Santa Fe Opera later this summer. There will be five percussionists in the orchestra pit (an unusually large number) playing 35 different instruments (an extremely large number). Figuring out where it all goes takes great logistics management.

Some of the instruments are standard-issue items (a bass drum, xylophone, and chimes); some are sound effects equipment that hasn’t changed in centuries (a thunder sheet and a wind machine); and some are rare (a lion’s roar and a cellophane cymbal).

Klieger’s dream piece to perform? “Andy Akiho’s Ping-Pong Concerto, which was performed by the New York Philharmonic in 2018. The score calls for four soloists — two good ping-pong players, a violinist, and a percussionist, but I’m pretty sure I could figure out how to play percussion and ping-pong at the same time. I’d love to try!”