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K-State Today

September 15, 2014

K-State Music alumnus returns to present research

Submitted by Kurt Gartner

Jeff Hewitt

K-State alumnus Jeff Hewitt will present his research on solo vibraphone literature at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, in 201 McCain Auditorium. The presentation is free and open to the public.

An important resource in many areas of music is the availability of standardized graded databases of literature for specific solo instruments. Currently in the area of percussion, there are no graded databases for solo vibraphone literature. While there are several sources that contain subjective graded music lists, none of these sources have a standardized approach in defining each of their difficulty levels, and this creates contradicting information for some particular pieces. The goal of this research is to present the first standardized and systematic approach to grading the difficulty levels of vibraphone literature.

Hewitt is a candidate for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in percussion performance at the University of Arizona where he studies with Norman Weinberg. While serving as a graduate teaching assistant at Arizona, his responsibilities included teaching lessons to undergraduate percussion majors, instructing the percussion methods course and coaching the percussion ensemble.

Hewitt has performed with the Malleus Trio, UA Percussion Group, Rosewood Marimba Band, and UA Steel, as well as other ensembles on campus and throughout southern Arizona. As a scholar, his research focuses on the objective grading of four-mallet solo vibraphone literature, a project that has spawned an extensive database containing pieces organized by difficulty level. Hewitt received a Master of Music from the University of Missouri under the guidance of Julia Gaines and a Bachelor of Music Education from Kansas State University where he studied with Kurt Gartner.