Wisconsin Young Artists Compete

[bright marimba music] - Zachary Lemke: My name is Zach.

I'm a junior at Oregon High School.

I've been playing percussion since fifth grade, so seven years now.

[drumming] I enjoy hand drumming a lot.

I like the feeling on my hands after I'm done.

It's what I do to, like, warm up for a marimba.

Gets my hands, like, activated.

I always want to play something harder, or do something that will take my musicality up a level.

I joined the WYSO Percussion Ensemble in seventh grade.

It was probably the best decision I made for myself musically.

It was just so, like, eye-opening for me.

I'm like, "Whoa, you can do a lot of really cool stuff with percussion."

[bright orchestral music] I also play in the WYSO's Youth Orchestra.

Every two years, they do an international tour.

And the one last year was Spain and Portugal.

So, I was fortunate enough to get to go on that.

It was probably the most enjoyable experience I've ever had.

And we got to play at these amazing venues.

Some were outdoors in front of this, like, massive cathedral.

It was awesome.

And the food there was so good.

It was a lot of fun.

I really enjoy hanging out with my friends.

Things like playing Rock Band or stuff like that, Guitar Hero.

[bright marimba music] - Cindy Terhune: There you go!

I will be playing Keiko Abe's Prism Rhapsody.

I first encountered this piece when my friend Elliot played in the Final Forte in 2024.

And I'm like, "Oh, I wanna do that someday."

I came to my private teacher, Cindy, and I'm like, "Can I do this?"

And she went for it.

I didn't think she was gonna go for it, to be honest.

I thought she was gonna be like, "Absolutely not.

That's way too hard for you."

But she did.

There's sections where you're playing ungodly fast, sections where you're just, like, super slow, methodical, and everything in between.

There's two mallet, six mallet, four mallet.

It's ingenious, really.

Cindy has amazing teaching techniques.

- Your phrasing today depends on who you are today.

- When I was starting to be able to play it up to tempo, and she says, "Great, now that you can do that, "I want you to go to half tempo and not play past that for two weeks."

And it was so excruciating just to do that every day.

But it really helped in my preparation of the piece.

Percussion rarely get solos, rarely get opportunities where they're, like, the main feature.

I think it will finally be nice where I don't necessarily have to play quieter and I get to blend with the orchestra, make some cool music.

[ending note] [applause]