![music prodigy in percussion music prodigy in percussion](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/24/c0/10/24c010955b2ff6db47162a58cf50604b.jpg)
On the Rock Legends Cruise, he performed with guitar players Gary Hoey and Brandon “Taz” Niederauer at the Legends Jam.Īt age 10, Julius played marimba and received his first album credit with the band Blue Coupe, which featured Alice Cooper and former members of Blue Öyster Cult. After seeing an Alice Cooper concert, he set up his drums outside by the buses and played to “School’s Out For Summer” when the students were dismissed on their last day of school. In second grade, Julius performed in front of his entire school with principal Sean Clark from Kreamer Street Elementary, playing “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne. His mother, Heather Radino, plays the piano and both his mother and father are Bellport High School graduates. Julius is also an accomplished student musician, playing the marimba, timpani, snare drum, multi-percussion, and drum set… he also plays a little piano. “Julius has held drumsticks from the age of 1.” “He gravitated towards the drums when he was young with a DVD player watching Buddy Rich,” he said of his son. Some might credit his father Jules Radino, drummer of the local Blue Öyster Cult band, but dad said he took an interest to it all on his own. In the 1990s and 2000s Kettel has broadened his expertise to include Latin American and Japanese percussion he played taiko drums on the 2006 release Here's to the Heroes.What’s a 13-year-old boy and prodigy drummer’s favorite band? Well, Van Halen, of course.Įighth-grade South Country student and Bellport Village resident Julius Radino has been playing drums since before he could talk and sitting in on open mics since he was 4. His credits include several of James Horner's soundtracks, including that for the controversial Apocalypto, and he has also worked with solo percussion star Evelyn Glennie. He has appeared on recordings ranging from contemporary classical music (such as a disc of Alberto Ginastera's chamber music released on the ASV label in 1995) to straight pop (the 1998 A Very Special Season Christmas album by Diana Ross), but he has been most prolific in various fields where pop and classical meet: film music, symphonic rock, and crossover music from various countries among his successes in the 2000s have been recordings with Australia's Ten Tenors and trumpeter Chris Botti. He appeared in 1974 on the experimental African Sanctus disc assembled by ethnomusicologist David Fanshawe, but his recording career did not get started in earnest until the early '80s. The orchestra's conductor at the time was the feared Pierre Boulez, but (according to orchestrator Larry Ashmore) the young Kettel wasn't fazed: as the musicians were asked to make yet another repetition during a rehearsal of a difficult contemporary score, Kettel raised his hand and said, "Hang on, Pierre, I think I know where you're going wrong." Whether for that reason or to pursue more lucrative work in the pop sector, Kettel left his BBC post. Born in the early '50s, he became a prodigy as a percussionist (it's hardly a surprise) and achieved the rank of co-principal in the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the age of 20. British percussionist Gary Kettel has worked with equal facility in the classical and pop worlds.