Drummers, as a species, are generally granted asylum from the dictates of onstage formal dress. Their counterparts in classical percussion, however, are not so liberated: When Mike Truesdell, then a graduate student in percussion at the Juilliard School, arrived backstage to a fall 2011 solo performance in a t-shirt, he was promptly asked to change. “I am not one for fashion,” he admitted. “Though I think I had some appropriate pants on.” Truesdell donned the audio engineer’s top—“about 18 sizes too big”—and the show went on.
