August 03, 2020 I Coronavirus
PMC’s Celebrity Drum Lessons Offer Drummers Inspiration to Develop Skills
By Daniel Margolis
Zoom screenshots of "Lesson with a Master" instructors (clockwise from upper-left) Rick Latham, Gorden Campbell, David Stanoch, and Rich Redmond conducting virtual one-hour video-conference lessons with International Drum Month contest winners.
The Percussion Marketing Council kicked off a new International Drum Month promotion in May offering drummers a chance to win an online “Lesson with a Master” with internationally recognized celebrity drummers Gorden Campbell, Rick Latham, Rich Redmond, and David Stanoch. In light of the many COVID-19 restrictions across the country, this year’s reimagined International Drum Month promotion worked perfectly with the new social distancing guidelines.
“We wanted to create an educational opportunity for drummers to learn from and experience a private online lesson with some of the industry’s most respected players,” PMC Co-Executive Director David Jewell said. “People are becoming more familiar with online teaching technology used for live lessons. Even with a simple video chat, the audio quality is good enough, and you can hear what someone is playing on an instrument. It’s not too different to a face-to-face lesson.”
The giveaway attracted close to 500 entries from players of all levels, genders and ages from across the county via PlayDrums.com, the PMC’s official website. Each randomly selected winner had a private one-hour video-conference lesson with one of the four artists. Winners included Marcus Cain, Johnny Shankel, Jack Johnson, Nathan Bales, Daniel Jimenez, John Helm and Stephanie Krichena.
“We were extremely fortunate to have these teaching artists step forward to help us draw attention to the 25th anniversary of the Percussion Marketing Council and participate in this very special 2020 International Drum Month campaign,” said Jennifer Paisley, PMC co-executive director.
