Mentorship and Mastery: An Interview with Raynor Carroll of ABOP
- Nathan Coles
- May 8
- 10 min read
The world of symphonic music is often seen as a bastion of tradition, but behind the velvet curtains of the world’s greatest orchestras, a movement for change is drumming up a new rhythm. Raynor Carroll, a legendary principal percussionist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the co-founder of the Alliance of Black Orchestral Percussionists (ABOP), is at the forefront of this transformation. In a recent conversation, Raynor shared how he is demystifying the path to the professional stage, mentoring the next generation of Black percussionists, and why being a "fantastic musician" is only half the battle. From the high-stakes recording booths of Hollywood to the disciplined rehearsal halls of major conservatories, Raynor’s mission is clear: to ensure that the future of orchestral percussion is as diverse as the music it produces.
Meet the Guest, Raynor Carroll:
Black Swamp Artist, Raynor Carroll, born in 1957 and raised in Pasadena, California, is a trailblazing musician who served as the first Black percussionist and as Principal Percussionist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic for over three decades, from 1983 to 2016. After being inspired by a high school student assembly and receiving a full scholarship to Cal State University Los Angeles, he studied under Mitchell Peters, eventually winning his first professional audition under maestro Carlo Maria Giulini. Throughout his 33 seasons with the Philharmonic, Carroll performed under world-renowned conductors like Esa-Pekka Salonen and John Williams, and his percussion skills are featured on major Hollywood soundtracks such as The Lion King and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. A prolific educator and author, he founded Batterie Music to publish essential orchestral excerpt books and authored the Symphonic Repertoire Guide for Timpani and Percussion, a comprehensive resource covering more than 3,000 works. Driven by his experiences as a minority in classical music, Carroll founded the Alliance of Black Orchestral Percussionists (ABOP) in 2020 to provide mentorship and empowerment to emerging Black symphonic musicians. For his exceptional contributions to performance, literature, and his tireless efforts to make classical music more inclusive, Carroll was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society (PAS) Hall of Fame.
Insightful Takeaways
The Professionalism of Being a "Whole Person": Raynor emphasizes that technical skill is secondary to being a reliable and helpful human being. His focus on "holistic" professionalism—showing up early and helping the section setup—suggests that in the high-stakes world of major orchestras, character is what ultimately sustains a career.
The "Analog" Necessity of Music: A major theme is the danger of digital isolation. Raynor points out that while YouTube is a great tool, it cannot replace the human interaction of an ensemble. The nuance of orchestral music is found in the physical presence and collective breath of the musicians, a gap currently seen in students who have great technique but lack "musicianship."
Breaking the "Skin Color" Barrier: Raynor identifies a profound invisibility that Black orchestral musicians face. His solution is deceptively simple: conversation. By humanizing performers through direct engagement, the audience and colleagues can begin to dismantle the unconscious bias that classical music "is not something Black people do."
The Sonic Identity of Gear: In percussion, your instruments are your voice. Raynor makes it clear that equity in the orchestral world isn't just about training; it's about access to the tools that allow a musician to create the correct "resonant sound." Without the right gear, a player’s identity is unfairly tied to the limitations of their equipment.
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This interview was recorded on March 19th, 2026. The follow transcript has been edited for brevity and legibility.
Tim Church: Really, congratulations on the Musicians at Play program. I think this is a three or four-year streak for your protégés—Alexa and London both had the opportunity to perform and record at the Eastwood Scoring Stage. It's relatively new to me and maybe some of our viewers and listeners; can you expand on that a little bit? What that opportunity is and what it means?
Raynor Carroll: Yeah, it started by Musicians at Play, a nonprofit that saw a lack of diversity in the studios in Hollywood—as in the musicians, particularly—and thought what they might do is to have a youth orchestra that is focused on training them and getting the live experience of studio work. Which is, you know, very different from what we do in the orchestra, as in it's 90% sight-reading. So, the playing is different because there's an engineer and it's all miked, and it's recorded sound. So it really is a different art to it.
Anyway, they started this like five years ago with having an orchestra every year that would first rehearse cues from specific movies—whether it's John Williams' E.T., The Mandalorian, to some of the video game music, which is obviously very popular with the younger folks. It's been happening for five years and ABOP has had at least two protégés in it every year since the second year.
Tim Church: And with your career with the LA Phil, the highest level of performance, you’re essentially demystifying that path to the stage for your protégés and your students. Are there more professional bits or information that you pass along—more than just playing right notes and rhythms—that helps give them the confidence walking into Warner Brothers Studio, for example, to have that opportunity?
Raynor Carroll: Being a fantastic musician doesn't make you a fantastic person. So we try to make them whole, as in a responsible young adult that can carry forth through life in whatever they do. Because as we know in the music industry, there's no guarantees. Ideally, we want to have players in orchestras, or players doing the studio work and doing the gigs, but along the way they probably will have to interact with people in other ways—whether obviously it's you've got to interact with your family, your friends, your coworkers, your students at school with you.
So we try to help in that way, in helping them mature and develop to be responsible, reliable, dependable. When I was in the Phil and hiring extra players, would I hire you? You know, do you show up on time? Are you there early? Do you help others with their setup? Are you just coming in just in time for you to set up and play your part? But it's holistically—it's about the section, it's not just about what you do, but how can you complement the others. And that carries through, like I say, through everything I feel we do in life.
Tim Church: As a Black percussionist, what would you say the invisible barriers to being a Black percussionist are that the average concert-goer, or even another concert performer, might not fully realize or understand?
Raynor Carroll: Yeah, that's a great question, and I would just include percussionist as in a Black orchestral percussionist. I just don't think we get the support, because a lot of times—and not all, because there are many folks that are very supportive of what we do, thank goodness—but I think we do run across this that, oh, just looking at you, we see you as a Black person. We don't get included in some conversations, we get overlooked for opportunities like mentorship, training, and jobs. I mean, the idea is that this is not something that Blacks do. We don't go into symphonic orchestral music.
But of course, we do, you know, just about like anything else. Now the numbers aren't there, we aren't in the orchestras, and there's a lot of different reasons for that. But just because someone is Black does not mean that they cannot do this, that, or the other. And so I would say that's the number one thing that perhaps does not get said. And what I would say, one way to help it, is just start a conversation. You see somebody, and let's say they're leaving the concert and they see one of the Black percussionists walking to their car: "Hey, I really enjoyed that performance," and blah blah blah. Just get the conversation going and you will realize that they're another musician on stage, probably no different except in their skin color.
Tim Church: I’ve had similar conversations with Josh Jones in the past. One of his comments that really stuck to me was that in his case, he had to work two or three times harder even though he is two or three times more talented, just to essentially be viewed at the same level. In the next five to ten years, where do you see the rosters or what do you hope to see as a direct result of your work with ABOP?
Raynor Carroll: I would love to see more Black musicians in total, of course Black percussionists, in the orchestras in five or ten years. I'd love to see it in two or three years, but it is a long process. Just as if you study violin—if you start at five, you have a great advantage over a student that starts, let's say, when they're twelve, because the artistic level that is needed in professional orchestras and being as competitive as they are these days, it takes a lot of years. It takes a lot of training. And of course, everyone doesn't make it, but I would say, you know, starting out as young as possible and I'd love to see in ten years many Black percussionists filling some of these jobs.
Tim Church: Can you talk about the general age of your protégés? And then do you have a program or ideas to reach younger percussionists?
Raynor Carroll: Our protégés range in age from 15 to 26 currently. We have one in high school, most of them are in undergraduate work, and then a few have graduated. So almost every age, every level. I think most teachers know this is that every student is different. So how you connect, approach with the mentorship and the music side, you have to be very open because there are certain students that really take to listening to what you say. Others you have to show them.
But most of them these days learn by watching a video—YouTube video. As you know, anybody can post a video. And whether it's, I don't want to say right or wrong, or whether it's the path I would like them to go to when they see, let's say, someone play Porgy and Bess, is not necessarily the path I'd like to see them go. So having that realization is very important. It's an awakening thing. And it's hard to get them away from, number one, their phones. The problem is that the phone is not a person, it's not human, it's not an orchestra. You need to go to concerts. You need to do your private study with the teacher—great—and you do your practicing, but you need to play in an ensemble. You cannot learn about the Beethoven symphonies as well as you can on stage actually playing them.
So that, I think, is very much lacking. And this may get to something else you may ask: what is my recommendation to young folks auditioning? You're usually over-qualified with technique, and that's a problem. They're lacking in musicianship and expressiveness. And I again relate that to this immediate gratification from a phone giving you all these answers and wanting to play this way. You cannot get a lot of that from the electronics. It's really playing in an ensemble. There's no beating that.
Tim Church: If you could give your 18-year-old self one piece of advice about the orchestral world, what would it be?
Raynor Carroll: Oh, that's easy. I'd just say go for it. It's an amazing career. You will not believe how fantastic a career this is. Now, that's if you love music. If you love, I would say, all styles—not just classical—then it's just going to be the ride of your life. Whether it's having colleagues that are amongst the best, the conductors, the soloists, just the total package is just amazing. So just go for it.
Tim Church: "ABOP protégé"—could you condense what that means into three or four words?
Raynor Carroll: They have to be teachable. They need to be curious. And this needs to be their passion. So: teachable, curious, and passionate about what they do.
Tim Church: How does having the right tools or gear play into the confidence of a student who might not have had access to professional instruments in the past?
Raynor Carroll: To me, obviously the higher the level you get—whether it's going from middle school to high school to college to grad school to the professional world—you need to start collecting a variety of tambourines, a variety of triangles, snare drums, cymbals, all of it. Because your music that you're going to be playing is going to get more diverse, as in different styles. And one instrument does not necessarily do it, in my mind.
A good example is the snare drum. If you've got a part, let's say, Scheherazade, which is famous for very soft, delicate, difficult passages, you need something that's going to speak very well at a soft dynamic, which is usually a narrow, shallow drum. And then the opposite end, I would say pretty much is Shostakovich—the most asked-for audition excerpt from him is the Shostakovich 10th Symphony, second movement. Don't use your same piccolo on that. You need a deep, dark, heavy sound. So use a six-and-a-half or whatever, a deeper drum that gets a different sound.
So, you know, like I say, when you rise to this level, you need to have a variety of instruments. And your gear is so important because that's what people identify you with. Conductors, contractors, and your colleagues in the orchestra—they don't know that this is this drum or that drum or this pair of cymbals. All they know is the sound that you create. So you’ve got to be careful. That becomes your identity. If you're playing someone else's cymbals and they're really dead, they're going to say, "Wow, this person really doesn't get a very resonant sound on the cymbals." So your gear is so important. I always think with things that ring—like cymbals, triangle—it's better to have one that rings too much than one that does not ring enough. Because when you need that tone and quality, and if it doesn't ring very much, it's not there. The opposite is true: if it rings a lot, which is great, you can mute it a little bit. You can always take away, but you can never add.
Tim Church: How can someone help support ABOP? A non-percussionist, a music lover—how can they help support your efforts?
Raynor Carroll: You know, I would say just support live music. Support classical music. If you happen to see a Black musician, just tell them what you think—I hope it was a good performance. If you happen to see a Black percussionist, give them a "Hey, you did a great job" and ask them questions about who they study with. It’s just to start, again, that conversation. It makes them feel like a person. That might sound odd, but sometimes we're so isolated and by ourselves that just having that conversation is such a great thing.
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