One of the new shows at this year’s First Night celebration on New Year’s Eve in Ocean City is an interactive percussion performance in which the young and “young at heart” join in the rhythm.
Steve Gryb, the self-described “Pied Piper of Percussion,” says his show is New Year’s Eve and Mardi Gras rolled into one. The family event invites the audience to march in a parade of maracas, drum along to “Wipeout” and to close the show with whistles and James Brown’s “I Feel Good.”
The one-hour shows take place at 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the Chris Maloney Lecture Hall at the Ocean City Free Public Library on Wednesday, Dec. 31. The shows are included along with about 70 others with all-inclusive First Night admission buttons.
- Learn more about purchasing buttons and about the event: Guide to First Night and First Day in Ocean City, NJ
The shows will represent a homecoming for Gryb, who grew up in Absecon, attended Oakcrest High School and graduated from Absegami High School in 1974.
Gryb went on to become music professor in southern Florida, and when he took a jazz group to local schools and let the students participate, “The kids went crazy,” he said.
That’s when “a lightbulb went off” and Gryb began refining a show that he ultimately would take internationally upon his retirement. In the U.S., Gryb performs from Key West, Fla., to Fairbanks, Alaska. This will be his 11th First Night performance but first in Ocean City.
“This 100% interactive, high energy, fun, hands-on, one-of-a-kind percussion show has entertained and educated audiences throughout North America for over 20 years,” Gryb says. “Every show features kids playing tambourines of all shapes, sizes, and colors; beating on bongos; parading with colorful maracas; and whistling, jiggling and jamming for the grand finale.”
For more details visit: grybmusic.com/percussion/percussion.html
