Bach on marimba (1987)

Leigh Howard Stevens (1953) is a marimba artist best known for developing, codifying, and promoting the Stevens technique or Musser-Stevens grip, a method of independent four-mallet marimba performance based on the Musser grip. Leigh Howard Stevens studied under some of the most prominent percussion teachers and performers of his time, including jazz drummer Joe Morello, and marimbist Vida Chenoweth, with whom he studied in New Zealand the summer after his freshman year of college. Stevens pursued his college studies at the Eastman School of Music planning to be a drum set player. Stevens recalls, "I noticed when I got to Eastman that the techniques I was using--the one-handed roll, rotary strokes, doing Baroque trills with one hand, two-part Bach inventions, things like that--got a lot of attention. (...)