As a child, senior Allie Bogetich always was surrounded by music, from Billy Joel to ACDC to Neil Diamond. So her interest in music came as no surprise.
When she was a fourth-grader, Bogetich bet her older sister, Emme Bogetich, ’20, that she could find a louder instrument to play compared to her sister’s baritone. The next year, she did exactly that.
Bogetich has played the drums for eight years in Country Day’s concert band, and she’s played in the high school jazz band since seventh grade. She joined the Sacramento Youth Symphony freshman year.
“I usually have four practice sessions a week, with each session ranging from half an hour to an hour,” she said. “For the Youth Symphony, I usually spend an hour learning the music and we also have an hour-long meeting during the week.”
Country Day music teacher Bob Ratcliff views Bogetich’s dedication as one of her many strengths.
“Allie is one of the students who did everything I said would make her a good musician,” Ratcliff said. “Practicing regularly, taking private lessons, taking any opportunity to play with others, these are all things that she’s done from the very beginning.”
As a percussionist, Bogetich has learned to play many different instruments, including a drum set, timpani, marimba and bells, but her favorite by far is the snare drum. After all, it is her main instrument.
“My favorite part of playing the drums is the wow factor,” she said. “That sounds superficial, but it feels great when you tell someone you’re a drummer and they think that it’s cool. I also love the versatility. Every type of music needs drums of some sort.”
In regards to her college applications, Bogetich wants to major in engineering but is submitting an art supplement to almost all of the colleges.
She combined five videos of herself playing different instruments into one video, so that the supplement follows all the different rules set by different colleges.
In the video, she’s playing a snare drum, xylophone, timpani, tambourine and drum set.
“I don’t want to major in anything music-related,” Bogetich said, “But I definitely want to keep playing for as long as I can. I’ll definitely join the band at my college. It’d also be fun in the future to take a year off and tour with a symphony for a while.”
She likes to play a variety of different types of music, which differ based on the group in which she’s playing.
For jazz band, she likes to play second-line style music, which is like New Orleans music.
“I like the style because I can have more fun with it; there aren’t as many rules,” Bogetich said. “A memory that stuck with me is when we did this thing and a guest told me to make the drums sound ‘dirtier.’ I didn’t really know what he meant, but I just had fun with it.”
In the concert band, she likes playing military marches and Irish music.
“The marches show off my snare skills, so I don’t blend in with the group as much,” Bogetich said. “I don’t really know why I like the Irish music though. I guess it’s just fun to listen to.”
Photo by Mayumi Acosta Photography
Ratcliff said he can’t choose a favorite from the pieces she’s played because sometimes it’s her interpretation, not the piece, that he likes.
However, one song does jump out at him: “The Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin.
“When we first started recording that song for GarageBand, and I heard her play it on the drums, I thought it was pretty cool,” he said. “Both her private lesson teacher and I have always had a hard time getting her to play harder. She’s always been a soft drummer.
“But the first time I heard her play that song, she went for it. It’s not the most difficult piece, but I really enjoyed hearing her play it because she finally played how I’d been wanting her to play.”
Bogetich’s favorite two pieces are “Soft Shoe Rag” by Randall D. Standridge and “Italian Rhapsody” by A. D. Arcangelo. She prefers to play longer pieces with movement in them, another example being “Double Happiness” by Christopher Cerrone.
In her eight years of playing, Bogetich has attended many competitions with both bands and won multiple awards.
She has three awards from the Forum Festival, two from the Reno Festival and one Folsom Festival award.
Bogetich also was going to attend a solo competition earlier this year, but it was canceled due to the pandemic. However, she still hopes to attend this year because she’s never competed as a soloist.
Ratcliff hopes that before Bogetich leaves for college, he gets another chance to play with her live.
“Every few years I get a student who plays at her ability level,” Ratcliff said. “One of the things I like to do with those students is to sit in the MP room and play music together. I play in jazz groups and rock groups, so inviting her to come play with one of my bands would be really cool.”
He said Bogetich is the kind of student that makes him feel good about his job and inspires him to continue his work with the music program.
“Everytime I hear Allie play a piece; be it jazz, rock or classical music, that raises her to a new level of musicianship, it becomes my favorite thing I’ve heard her play,” Ratcliff said. “At least, until the next thing she does that raises that bar. Lately it’s been listening to her improvise jazz on xylophone.”
Bogetich derives her inspiration from other people as well.
“When I’m frustrated with my instrument, just going to band class and hanging out with the people in that community brightens my day,” she said. “Another inspiration is one of my favorite musicians, David Garibaldi. He was a drummer for Tower of Power, a band from the 70s. I was lucky to have a lesson with him a couple of years ago, and I found out that he had an accident with a train a couple of years back, but he continued drumming, which inspired me.”
One thing that made her a better drummer was something her private-lesson teacher, Tim Metz, told her: “It’s not a problem to solve, it’s music to play.”
This helped her learn it’s not about playing the notes correctly, but about how you play notes correctly.
So far, Bogetich’s music career has been a long journey and, in her words, “meticulous, peculiar and a whole hell of a lotta fun.”
— By Arikta Trivedi
Originally published in the Nov. 17 edition of the Octagon.
