Like Mr. Alves, the younger percussionists already have experience playing professionally, though in realms far from classical music.

Although not Jewish his father's Latin band regularly played at Jewish theatre, weddings and bar mitzvahs in Miami, giving the young percussionist an interest in Jewish music.

By then, a young percussionist and arranger named Ernest Anthony Puente Jr. had soaked up Machito's music from the inside.

It had an athletic young percussionist, Stomu Yamashta, leaping around the platform in pursuit of instruments to thwack.

Among a score of concerts presented by the academy from early June, several were dedicated to percussion music, with Yan Meresz composing a work for 12 of the young percussionists.

Instead of piano or conventional chamber accompaniment, he joined forces with Uffe Savery and Morten Friis, two young Danish percussionists who perform as the Safri Duo.

Experimental music and downtown showmanship have rarely been blended more delightfully than in the early solo performances of the debonair young percussionist and composer David Van Tieghem.

A brigade of young percussionists flicked their mallets up and down amid a thick underbrush of drums, chimes, vibes and the metal equipment that held them.

In this fiercely minimalist image, the young Brazilian percussionist and songwriter is powerfully primal and of the moment.