Upping sticks

US percussionist Jacob Nissly guest stars with the NZSO on a custom-made concerto.

- RICHARD BETTS

Jacob Nissly isn't used to all the media attention. It's not the Listener that has discombobulated him, it's the New York Times, which just hours earlier has run a story that San Francisco Symphony (SFS) music director EsaPekka Salonen is stepping down, citing differences of ambition between him and the orchestra's board.

Nissly, SFS's principal percussionist, who travels here in April to play Adam Schoenberg's concerto Losing Earth with the NZSO, is visibly rattled. "We have a concert in an hour," he says, "and I think there's going to be a lot of press here all of a sudden."