A Man Without Measure: youbloom Bids Farewell to Drum Pioneer Vic Firth (1930-2015)
Here at youbloom, we pride ourselves on giving good advice. As musicians and creatives who love the independent ethic, we like to draw from whatever experiences we have - be they salty and extensive or brief, yet fresh - and share them with you so that all angles of this music business madness are explored and unpacked as thoroughly as we can manage. The result of our musings, we hope, is as thorough and transparent an advantage as possible, for you, the unsigned artist. But just as often as we communicate, we have to listen. And sometimes, we simply have to stop talking altogether. Today is one of those days. Today we have no advice, only respects to pay to a man who dedicated his life to the pursuit of the impeccable: Mr. Vic Firth. Mr. Firth, famed, longstanding member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, teacher, and drumstick company heavyweight, passed away on Sunday. Born Everett Joseph Firth, on June 2, 1930, in Winchester, Massachusetts, to parents Rosemary and Everett E. (himself a noteworthy trumpet and cornet player), “Vic” started learning to play the cornet himself at the very young age of four. Later, the adolescent Everett became interested in several other instruments, beginning lessons in piano, trombone, clarinet, and, perhaps most fortuitously, percussion. During this time, he also began studying and learning to write musical arrangement, and by the time he was a high-schooler, Firth was known in his hometown of Sanford, Maine, as a full-time percussionist. By the age of fifteen, he had formed his own twelve-man band, and settled on the stage name of Vic Firth, which, he once laughingly recounted in an interview with Modern Drummer magazine, sounded less like a “...skin disease” than the name Everett. [caption id="attachment_3233" align="alignnone" width="245"]![Vic Firth in later years. Photo credit: paulauger.com](http://www.youbloom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/firth.gif)
![Firth at work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Photo credit: Milton Feinberg/Courtesy of the Boston Symphony](http://www.youbloom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/vicfirthmarkingscore-edit_custom-7ac00ba7600df14721b33b5ffd18200ed733da92-s900-c85.jpg)
![Vic Firth sticks, loved by many. Photo credit: ArunBli](http://www.youbloom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/vic_firth_by_arunbli.jpg)