Anthony J. Cirone
I. Introduction: The Beat of a Lifetime
Portraits in Rhythm: The Life and Enduring Legacy of Anthony J. Cirone The house lights dim, a hush falls over the concert hall, and from the back of the stage, a lifetime of discipline and artistry is summoned into a single, perfect strike. For thirty-six years, this was the world of Anthony J. Cirone. As a percussionist with the San Francisco Symphony, he performed under the batons of a pantheon of 20th-century conducting titans—from the foundational Maestro Josef Krips who hired him, to the dynamic Seiji Ozawa and Michael Tilson Thomas, and legendary guests like Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. To witness Cirone on stage was to see a master at work, a musician whose precision and expressive power helped define the sound of a world-class orchestra. Yet, to focus solely on his celebrated performance career is to miss the true scope and resonance of his contribution to music.
Anthony J. Cirone's enduring legacy is not built on a single pillar, but on the remarkable and indivisible synergy of four distinct professional identities: the virtuosic performer, the foundational educator, the revolutionary composer, and the pragmatic innovator. His life has been a continuous and powerful feedback loop where the demands of the stage informed the needs of the classroom, the gaps in the classroom sparked the creation of a new musical language, and the codification of that language, in turn, elevated the artistry of performers everywhere. From his landmark pedagogical work Portraits in Rhythm, a staple on music stands across the globe, to his induction into both the Percussive Arts Society and Modern Drummer Halls of Fame, Cirone has fundamentally reshaped what it means to be a percussionist.
His career path was set on a dual track from its very inception. In 1965, fresh from The Juilliard School, he did not simply choose one path over another; he chose both, accepting a position with the San Francisco Symphony and, in the same year, an assistant professorship at San José State University. This foundational decision was not a compromise but a catalyst. It established the integrated ecosystem in which his entire body of work would flourish. The challenges he faced as a new professor, confronted with a dearth of quality teaching materials, directly fueled his compositional output. The profound musicality he absorbed from the world's greatest conductors became the very substance of the etudes he wrote for his students. To understand Anthony Cirone is to understand this symbiotic virtuosity, where every role he inhabited was essential to the others, creating a career of extraordinary and lasting impact.
II. From Jersey City to Juilliard: The Forging of a Percussionist
The story of Anthony J. Cirone's musical journey begins not in a conservatory but in a local music store in New Jersey. At the age of seven, his mother took him to choose an instrument. With no prior guidance or family precedent—no one in his large extended family of eleven aunts and uncles was a musician—he ran directly to a large drum set, an act of pure, unprompted fascination. This moment of instinctual choice set in motion a lifetime dedicated to rhythm and sound. His early training was an eclectic and practical apprenticeship, a world away from a formalized, institutional path. His first teachers included a local postman, a neighbor who also played drums, and a circus drummer in Newark, supplemented by more formal lessons with Jimmy Gerome at the Giglio Music Studio in Rutherford.
This grounded, hands-on education instilled a deep love for the craft, but a career in music was not a foregone conclusion. On a form filled out during his freshman year of high school, Cirone listed his intended profession as "electrical engineer". However, the lived experience of making music soon eclipsed this technical ambition. By his junior year, two years of playing in the school marching band and performing professionally in a piano, bass, and drum trio—where he would alternate between drum set and vibraphone—had clarified his calling. He began to envision a career in music, initially thinking he might become a music teacher, and even started giving elementary drum lessons at the same Giglio Music Studio where his own journey began.
The pivotal moment of his development came when his high school band director recommended he study with William Laverack, a graduate of The Juilliard School. Laverack prepared him for the rigorous audition that would grant him entry into one of the world's most prestigious conservatories. At Juilliard, Cirone earned both his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees, studying for six years under the tutelage of the legendary Saul Goodman, the celebrated solo timpanist of the New York Philharmonic. This mentorship was the crucible in which Cirone's musical philosophy was forged. Goodman, whose own instrument is deeply integrated into the melodic and harmonic fabric of the orchestra, taught far more than technique. He imparted a profound understanding of phrasing, musical interpretation, and articulation—the very soul of musicianship. Cirone absorbed this philosophy, which treated percussion not as mere timekeeping but as a voice capable of immense nuance and expression.
Goodman's influence extended beyond the practice room. In the orchestral world of the 1960s, a recommendation from a figure of his stature was paramount. He would often connect his top students directly with conductors seeking new talent, a system that bypassed the more formalized audition processes of today. It was through this channel of mentorship and trust that Cirone's professional career would be launched. The principles of deep musicality that Goodman instilled in him would become the central theme of Cirone's own work. He would, in effect, become the primary vehicle for translating the expressive philosophy of a master timpanist to the entire percussion family, most notably through his revolutionary approach to teaching the snare drum.
III. The Symphony Years: 36 Years Behind the Stand
Upon his graduation from Juilliard in 1965, Maestro Josef Krips, then Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, contacted Saul Goodman in search of a new percussionist. Goodman, as was his custom, declared he had "the perfect person for you," and recommended his graduating student. With that endorsement, Anthony Cirone won the coveted position. He, his wife Josie, and their six-month-old son, Anthony, packed their lives into a car and drove 3,000 miles from New York to California to begin a tenure that would span 36 years and witness a remarkable era in the orchestra's history.
Cirone often described his time with the San Francisco Symphony as a "continuous master class". The education he received on the concert stage was as profound as any he had undertaken in a conservatory. He performed under a succession of esteemed Music Directors, including Josef Krips, Seiji Ozawa, Edo DeWaart, Herbert Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas. The roster of guest conductors was equally staggering, a veritable who's who of the 20th century's most influential musical minds: Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Eugene Ormandy, Kurt Mazur, and James Levine. Each conductor brought a unique interpretive vision and stylistic demand, providing Cirone with an unparalleled, decades-long education in musical expression and orchestral sound. He particularly recalled the "terrific energy" Michael Tilson Thomas brought to the orchestra, programming large, complex works like the Mahler symphonies that remained vivid in his memory.
His role within the orchestra was not static but evolved over his long career, reflecting a deep-seated versatility and a collegial focus on the needs of the section. When he first joined, he played all the mallet parts. Later, in a testament to his own influence as a teacher, his former student Jack Van Geem won a position in the orchestra, at which point Cirone transitioned to playing snare drum for many years. He concluded his symphonic career playing cymbals after the section's longtime cymbalist retired. This fluidity provides a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of an orchestral percussion section, demonstrating a musician whose ego was secondary to the collective musical product. This adaptability was essential, as the orchestra itself was evolving. When Cirone joined, the San Francisco Symphony was a part-time ensemble with a 28-week season, a reality that necessitated his parallel academic career. As the orchestra grew in international stature and expanded its season, the demands on its musicians intensified, requiring a constant process of growth and adaptation.
This demanding environment shaped a deeply pragmatic and disciplined philosophy of performance. Cirone's preparation was meticulous. His daily routine included a 20-minute warm-up on a practice pad an hour before every rehearsal and concert, a regimen he would later publish in his book Master Technique Builders for Snare Drum. This discipline contributed to his remarkable claim that he never suffered from performance anxiety. He attributed his composure to thorough preparation—score study, listening to recordings, and marking musical cues—and held the unsentimental belief that musicians who struggle with debilitating nerves might be in the wrong profession. For Cirone, professionalism was a matter of preparation, and artistry was the confident expression that such preparation allowed.
IV. The Educator's Cadence: Shaping Generations of Musicians
While the Davies Symphony Hall was his stage, the university classroom was his laboratory. For Anthony Cirone, teaching was not a secondary pursuit or a post-performance retirement plan; it was a parallel, co-equal career he cultivated with the same intensity and dedication as his orchestral work. His impact as an educator has been as profound and far-reaching as his contributions as a performer, shaping generations of musicians and helping to legitimize percussion as a serious academic discipline.
His academic career was anchored by a 36-year tenure at San José State University (1965-2001), where he served as Professor of Music and, for many years, as Chairman of the Percussion Department. The state of the program upon his arrival speaks volumes about the nascent field of formal percussion education at the time. He recalled with a laugh that the percussion methods class was being taught by the clarinet instructor, as the previous percussion teacher had passed away years earlier and had not been replaced. Into this vacuum, Cirone built a comprehensive curriculum from the ground up. He conducted the Percussion Ensemble and taught a wide range of courses, including Fundamental Literature and Techniques, Percussion Pedagogy, and even a class on computer-based music notation. He was not merely a teacher but an architect of a modern university percussion program.
The demand for his expertise quickly spread. He held a concurrent lectureship at the prestigious Stanford University from 1983 to 1992 and also served on the faculty of San Francisco State University, making him a central figure in percussion education throughout the Bay Area. After retiring from both the San Francisco Symphony and San José State in 2001, he embarked on a remarkable second act. He was recruited by Gerald Carlyss to join the faculty of the world-renowned Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He served there as Professor of Music and Chairman of the Percussion Department from 2001 until his final retirement from academia in 2007. This appointment at one of the nation's elite music conservatories was the ultimate affirmation of his status as a master educator.
The most tangible evidence of his teaching legacy lies in the success of his students, who have gone on to hold prominent positions in major symphony orchestras and universities across the globe. His teaching philosophy went beyond mere technique. As his former student Charles Dowd, now a professor and principal timpanist himself, recalled, lessons with Cirone were dynamic events. He taught his students to play with character and imagination, to treat their instruments with the same artistic reverence that a cellist like Pablo Casals brought to his. In Dowd's words, "He was a teacher of the highest integrity".
V. Composing a Legacy: Portraits in Rhythm and Beyond
Anthony Cirone's most enduring contribution to music may well be the ink he put to paper. As a prolific composer and author, he addressed a critical void in the percussion world, creating a body of work that has become foundational to the instrument's pedagogy. His compositions were born not from abstract artistic impulse, but from the practical needs he identified in the classroom and the high musical standards he absorbed on the symphony stage.
The genesis of his masterwork, Portraits in Rhythm, is a story of inspired frustration. As a young professor at San José State, he was dissatisfied with the available etude books for snare drum. The exercises were technically demanding but musically sterile. They lacked the rich, expressive language he encountered every night in the scores of the great European composers—the detailed dynamics from ppp to fff, the subtle shifts in tempo like accelerando and ritardando, and the essential character words like allegro vivace or largo molto that guide a performer's interpretation. He resolved to create a set of studies that would train percussionists to be not just technicians, but complete musicians.
The result was a revolution in percussion pedagogy. Portraits in Rhythm: 50 Studies for Snare Drum became a worldwide standard precisely because it was a comprehensive manual for musicality. Each of the 50 etudes is a miniature tone poem, demanding not only rhythmic accuracy but also interpretive intelligence, dynamic control, and an understanding of musical phrasing. The book taught generations of students to think like artists, elevating the snare drum from a purely rhythmic instrument to one capable of profound expressive depth. The work's importance is underscored by the publication of a 50th-anniversary companion volume, The Evolving Legacy of Portraits in Rhythm, in which Cirone shares the mature interpretations he developed over a lifetime of performance and teaching.
While Portraits in Rhythm is his most famous work, it is but one piece of a vast and diverse compositional catalog of over 120 published titles. His creative output demonstrates an astonishing range, including three symphonies for percussion, four sonatas, a string quartet, and numerous works for orchestra and concert band. His prowess as a composer of large-scale works was recognized in 1999 when he received a Special Distinction Award from ASCAP for his orchestral piece, Pentadic Striations. Beyond his compositions, Cirone authored essential reference texts, including the insightful The Great American Symphony Orchestra: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Its Artistry, Passion and Heartache and the indispensable Cirone's Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Musical Terms. His influence was further amplified through his editorial roles, serving as Executive Percussion Editor for Meredith Music Publications and previously as a consultant and editor for Warner Bros. and Alfred Music.
Table 1: Key Publications of Anthony J. Cirone
Category — Representative Works — Purpose and Impact
Foundational Pedagogy — Portraits in Rhythm; Portraits in Melody; Portraits for Timpani; Simple Steps to Snare Drum — Established a new standard for musicality in percussion education, teaching interpretation alongside technique. The Simple Steps series provides an accessible entry point for beginners.
Advanced Technique & Repertoire — Master Technique Builders for Snare Drum; The Orchestral Snare Drummer; Symphonic Repertoire for Timpani — Codified advanced practice routines and provided essential training materials for aspiring orchestral musicians, bridging the gap between the practice room and the professional stage.
Major Compositions — Pentadic Striations; Three Symphonies for Percussion; Four Sonatas — Demonstrated his skill as a composer of serious concert music for both percussion ensemble and full orchestra, expanding the repertoire and earning critical acclaim.
Prose and Reference — The Great American Symphony Orchestra; Cirone's Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Musical Terms; The Logic of It All — Offered invaluable insights into the music profession and provided practical reference tools for students and professionals, showcasing his role as a public intellectual for the percussion community.
VI. The Cirone Method: Philosophy, Practice, and Permanence
Underpinning Anthony Cirone's varied accomplishments is a coherent and powerful philosophy—a "method" for artistry and professionalism that is at once demanding and deeply pragmatic. This worldview, honed over decades in the high-pressure environments of the concert hall and the university, is devoid of romanticism. Instead, it is grounded in intellectual rigor, unwavering discipline, and a clear-eyed understanding of what a sustainable career in music truly requires.
His approach to practice and preparation was the bedrock of his career. He viewed mistakes not as failures but as data. An error in performance was acceptable once; repeating it, however, was a problem that signaled a specific flaw in preparation that needed a logical solution—more focused practice for a missed note, more carefully marked cues for getting lost in the score. This analytical mindset extended to his definition of musicianship itself. He believed true artistry developed over a long career and was rooted in a deep, intellectual engagement with the composer's score, requiring a command of everything from dynamic markings to the nuances of foreign musical terms. A core tenet of his teaching was that percussion music must be phrased with the same musicality as any other instrument, even when the composer has not explicitly marked it, demanding that the performer act as an intelligent and proactive interpreter.
Cirone is also the embodiment of the modern "portfolio professional." He understood that a career in music extends beyond the stage and the classroom. He has been a highly sought-after clinician for the industry's leading brands, including Yamaha, Zildjian, and Remo, sharing his expertise at workshops and conferences worldwide. His deep understanding of the craft also led him to become an instrument designer, creating signature lines of snare drum sticks for both the Avedis Zildjian Company and Malletech. This engagement with the commercial side of the industry demonstrates a holistic understanding of the music ecosystem and a desire to influence the very tools of his trade.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of his philosophy is the candid and pragmatic advice he offers to the next generation. He has expressed regret for not concentrating more on memorizing solo works during his development, having relied heavily on his formidable sight-reading skills. But his most striking counsel is a direct challenge to the "starving artist" myth. He strongly advises aspiring performers and educators to pursue a second college major in a field outside of music, such as computer technology, science, or math, and to take education courses. This, he argues, provides a crucial safety net and ensures stable employment options with benefits in a fiercely competitive profession. This advice reveals the core of the Cirone method: a belief that a successful artistic life is built not just on talent and passion, but on strategic planning, intellectual curiosity, and a resilient, real-world pragmatism.
VII. Conclusion: An Enduring Resonance
Anthony J. Cirone's career is a master class in synergy. The four distinct roles he inhabited—performer, educator, composer, and innovator—were not separate paths but interwoven threads that created a legacy of extraordinary strength and texture. The performer's ear, tuned by decades of collaboration with the world's finest conductors, informed the composer's pen. The composer's mind, driven to fill the pedagogical voids he discovered as an educator, created the tools that would empower generations of students. The educator's mission, in turn, produced a lineage of musicians who now populate the world's stages and classrooms, carrying his principles forward.
The official accolades serve as a testament to his monumental influence. His induction into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2007 is the highest honor bestowed by his peers, recognizing a lifetime of contributions to the art form. Similarly, his place in the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame, granted after he was voted the magazine's Best Classical Percussionist by readers for five consecutive years, confirms his widespread impact and public esteem. These honors are the formal recognition of a status he has long held in the percussion community: that of an elder statesman and a foundational figure.
Ultimately, the rhythm of Anthony J. Cirone's life's work continues to resonate today, long after his retirement from the symphony stage. It is heard in the crisp, archival recordings of the San Francisco Symphony, a permanent record of his artistry. It is felt in the hands of every young percussionist who opens Portraits in Rhythm for the first time and discovers that a snare drum can be a vehicle for profound musical expression. And it is passed on through the teaching and playing of his countless students, who carry his ethos of discipline, musicality, and pragmatic professionalism into the future. Anthony J. Cirone did more than just play percussion; he gave it one of its most articulate, intelligent, and enduringly musical voices.