The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is doing four performances of Beethoven's First Symphony, an involved and challenging work for timpani, on our Neighborhood Chamber Orchestra Series this weekend. Normally when we have these off-site weekends, I use plastic heads on the orchestra's instruments, but after two days of rehearsals, I opted to switch to calfskin. I plan on doing a longer calf-versus-plastic post at some point, but for now I'll leave it at this: there's something abou

Welcome to jeremyepptimpani.com! I'm looking forward to having a space to share my musical experiences, ideas, and thought process. While I expect a certain amount of timpani-insider geeking-out to go on here, I'm hopeful that there will be information that appeals to other musicians and fans of orchestral music in general. I've got several ideas for blog posts taking shape, and I'd encourage you to submit questions or suggestions for blog topics using the Contact page. Until