The final and most complex piece comprises three movements. The first movement, is "con brillo," which gets translated to "with scouring pad" in the Brothers' punnish way. In it, Sam Williams (Smerdyakov) and Nelson play back drums - drum heads built into the vertical wall of the set against which they stand. The second movement is "con moto" ("with motorcycles"), and features Patterson and Paul Magid (Dmitri) facing each other across a marimba. They play it by striking its wooden keys with short. rubber-tipped wooden clubs. In the final "allegro" movement. the back drums and the marimba are played together to make the tune of "The St. Julian Blues."

 

The concept of musical juggling has been used on stage before. according to Karl-Heinz Ziethen. juggling archivist. He reports that in 1920 Franco Piper was a specialist in banjo juggling. playing three banjos as he juggled and spun them on the floor. Around 1950, Eric Van Aro played drums as he juggled. and that motif is also being used today by the young Russian, Agronov. At the 1984 IJA convention. Barnaby strummed a guitar as he juggled two balls in one hand. and Dr. Hot and Neon currently perform a musical duo with guitar as well. However, no other act has employed music with the complexity and diversity demonstrated by the Karamazov Brothers.

is probably the world's best at it. Williams explained, "You have to be technically strong so you can leave the technique behind when you play."

 

Though the novice can pick up clubs and learn to strike a back drum fairly easily, the skill of maintaining a steady rhythm for music is much more difficult. "Back drumming is about listening, really. It's so removed from juggling as a skill that I can do it in the dark as well as in the light," Williams concluded.

 

Magid discovered back drumming one night in a London hotel. He stood with his back close to the wall and found he could create a rhythm by hitting the club against the wall on either the down or up beat. The skill has been progressively cultivated in the four years since then. Clubs are juggled with the shoulders shrugged high, and in a pattern more vertical than normal. That makes it easier to swing a club straight up or down to strike the drumming surfaces positioned above each shoulder and beside each hip. Increasing sophistication in rhythm is achieved by hitting multiple drums with one club between tosses.

 

"Quarter notes were easy, " said Williams. The quarter note is simply defined as a single spin, while double spins make three eighth notes. "The eighth-note breakthrough powered the stage show," Williams continued. "We next found we could push the eighth-note envelope to sixteenths. That's amazing, because with sixteenths you have the basis for a rock-and­roll song."

 

The choppy beat familiar in West Side Story's "Everything's Right in America" is 7/8 time, played by club jugglers as double, double, single, single, single. Twenty beats per measure are created with double, double, single, double, single, double, single, single.

 

Nor is the marimba easy to play. Again, there are only two basic moves - a single and double spin with the club. But "it takes real fast eye movement" to pick out the next key to hit, Patterson said.

 

"Theatre is the queen of art, and the queen has always been dressed in music," says Alyosha, the fair-haired and light­tongued Karamazov. If that is true, the Karamazov show wears beautiful fabric.