December 12, 2007
By MYRNA PETLICKI Contributor
Jeff Thacher is a percussionist who travels light. All of the amazing sounds that Thacher creates when he performs with Rockapella come from his mouth.
He will be providing accompaniment for the other four members of the acclaimed a cappella group on Saturday night when they perform their seasonal show, "A Rockapella Holiday," at Dominican University.
"We like to take a lot of Christmas music and update it to a contemporary style, the Rockapella way of doing things," Thacher said. "It's an exciting show. It's also a beautiful show -- just right for starting your Christmas time. We all love Christmas and have several Christmas albums out." These include "Christmas" (2000) and "Comfort & Joy" (2002).
Holiday selections will include "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "Jingle Bell Rock," "Silver Bells," "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" and "Angels We Have Heard on High." They will also do some original non-holiday songs.
Thacher joined Rockapella in 1993, when the original members of the group that had formed in the late '80s decided they wanted to add a mouth drummer to their show. The current members include vocalists Scott Leonard, George Baldi, John K. Brown and Kevin Wright.
It was an interesting career move for Thacher who holds a degree in music and recording from the acclaimed Berklee College in Boston, but one that has served him well.
Mouth noises
Thacher inadvertently began preparing for the role when he was a child. "I made sounds for my toys, my Legos and space ships," he recalled. "I'm from a musical family so it's very easy to take a short step from there to imitating drums off the radio.
"That's just a fun little kid thing. Nobody was paying anyone to do it until Rockapella came along," Thacher said, laughing.
Rockapella has always been a trendsetter, serving as a pioneer in the now burgeoning a cappella singing movement. Many people know the group from its five seasons on the award-winning PBS television show, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" Prior to that, they had been part of a PBS program featuring filmmaker Spike Lee, called "Spike & Co: Do it a Cappella."
Thacher already had the right background when he joined the group, having co-founded an a cappella group in Boston after graduating from college. "I had tried vocal percussion for a couple of songs, just as an experiment," he said.
Being a member of Rockapella all these years has been great, Thacher said. "Any time a musician can be working consistently, that musician is grateful."
He noted that an added bonus is that he has had a wide variety of experiences. "Rockapella definitely likes to keep a finger in every pie and close no door," Thacher said. "We've done commercials, morning TV, evening TV, global travel and performing for all sizes of audiences from two to five-thousand.
"It's been an incredible experience," he concluded. "It's given me the freedom to try my hand at other things as a musician while I continue to work for Rockapella. And the most important thing -- and it sounds corny -- is that Rockapella seems to make people happy because people connect with the humanity of a cappella music. People leave the show happier than when they came in."
'A ROCKAPELLA HOLIDAY'
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 15 at Lund Auditorium, Dominican University, 7900 W. Division St., River Forest. $32. (708) 488-5000 or www.dom.edu/pac.
