Meet Michael LaMattina of Ohio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael LaMattina.

Michael, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I began playing drums at age seven while growing up on Long Island, NY. My dad was my first drum teacher. When I was eleven we moved to the metro Atlanta area. In sixth grade I joined band in middle school and began to take music more seriously, increasing my practice time and playing all the instruments in the percussion family. In eighth grade I had the good fortune of getting into the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra and took a liking to playing in the orchestra. Throughout my high school years I played in the ASYO, marched with the Spirit of Atlanta Drum and Bugle Corps, and spent a summer at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. Having decided to pursue a career as an orchestral musician, I attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, in Oberlin, Ohio, completing my bachelor’s of music degree in performance. Following that I received my master’s degree in performance from Cleveland State University. Along the way I was taking auditions for jobs with professional orchestras and was able to win a job as principal percussionist with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra during my last semester of studies at CSU. I began my collegiate teaching career at Cedarville University and was appointed to my current position as percussion professor at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, in 2012. Over the span of my, thus far, 30 year career, I have played in a multitude of orchestras and musical settings, all of which have given me a richly diverse career in music.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There have been tremendous ups and downs. In 1994, the first summer I attended Tanglewood, one of the conductors that was working with the Institute orchestra I was playing in, Leonard Slatkin, told us that professional musicians experience lots of ups and downs. He was certainly correct. Professional orchestral auditions are amongst the most difficult endeavors in music, and there were times that the discouragement of not having a successful outcome at an audition deeply affected me. Navigating the job as a music professor at a major university has also brought along with it it’s own challenges – from switching between a teacher and a player most weeks, and developing a teaching method which engages students through all four years of their study with me has required a lot of learning on my part.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a professional percussionist and am both a player and teacher. I play primarily in the orchestral setting but have also played in jazz combos, for Broadway productions in the pit, and in contemporary chamber music ensembles. As a teacher, I have a private studio in my home where I teach beginner to advanced students and I am a percussion professor teaching at Miami University. I offer students instruction in all the major areas of percussion and have developed a reputation for versatility on all percussion and in most genres of music. Over the past ten years I have developed a niche for the videos I create and post on my social media. My Youtube channel has videos (I play on and produce myself) of excerpts from the orchestral repertoire, solos and etudes for percussion, and high production value videos of my percussion ensemble at Miami University.

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Producing work of quality in what you do.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mickeylamattina
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelLaMattinaPercussion
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelLaMattinaPercussion