Need a timpani or a gong? Then ring Russ Knutson at Chicago Percussion

As the maxim goes: Need something done? Call the guy.

In the case of specialty percussion rentals in Chicago, that guy is usually Russ Knutson, a crusty, caring and infinitely knowledgeable percussionist who has been involved in the music business for more than five decades.

“It’s amazing how many people know Russ, and it’s not just local,” said Joseph Sherman, one of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s two production managers. “I’ll be talking to people out of state, and they will have questions about [instrument] providers, and they’ll say, ‘I’ll just call Russ.’ They all know who he is.”

Knutson, whose firm is called Chicago Percussion Rental, provides instruments for Symphony Center Presents events, like its Jazz Series and Chamber Music Series; the CSO’s MusicNOW series and, more rarely, the orchestra itself.

In addition, he often supplies instruments for many rental events at Symphony Center, especially the frequent high-school and college concerts that take place there. “He is really dialed into student needs and educational organizations’ needs. He is really good at coordinating with those groups,” Sherman said.

In all, Knutson estimates he has an inventory of about 200 instruments, including 24 timpani, a couple dozen marimbas and 10 sets of orchestra bells or glockenspiels, not to mention more exotic instruments like an African log drum, bending gong or a bombo, an animal-skin drum from Argentina. (The Ravinia Festival needed that last one for one of its movie screenings accompanied by a live performance of the film’s score.) “You have to have a lot of equipment because everybody’s jobs overlap,” he said. “It’s a lot of gear.”

But it isn’t enough to just own the instruments. Anyone in this business also has to have a cargo van or truck to haul them, often custom-made cases to keep them safe and, of course, the availability to be on call virtually every day. “It’s not easy,” he said. “If you don’t have all the parts, you can’t do the job.”

He uses his suburban Glenview home as the warehouse for his business, and instruments can be found stacked and clustered in virtually every room, including the dining room, kitchen and bedrooms. Knutson kind of lives around them.

Fortunately, the house has double doors for its main front entrance, which open wide enough to allow Knutson, who sometimes employs helpers but largely works on his own, to move the instruments in and out. But a few times, he has had to take the doors off the hinges to be able to accommodate a Chinese drum or other large instrument.

Knutson, a Chicago native who grew up in the Hollywood Park neighborhood, began taking snare-drum lessons when he was 8 years old at Franks Drum Shop, which he called the largest such store of its kind in the United States. Established in 1938, it was part of a group of instrument shops that were clustered along Wabash Avenue near what is now Symphony Center. He subsequently added timpani, marimba and drum set lessons, and by age 16, he knew he wanted to be a professional percussionist, later majoring in music at DePaul University.

In 1970, when he was 18, he joined the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO’s pre-professional training ensemble, and received guidance from its four percussionists at the time. He went on to become a freelance percussionist, serving as a CSO substitute for 14 years and performing with visiting artists like famed vocalist Aretha Franklin, with whom he appeared for 32 years for her Chicago dates. He still performs with local orchestras, such as the Elmhurst Symphony, for which he’s the principal percussionist.

At the same time, he began renting instruments, an idea that came to him from watching rented instruments come and go at Franks Drum Shop. His first rental in 1972 was a vibraphone (one he still owns and rents) to the Civic Orchestra, which went on to acquire a similar instrument a year or so later. “It started out that rentals were a sideline, something I would do maybe once a week for people and the rest of the week I would play percussion,” he said.

“It started out that rentals were a sideline, something I would do maybe once a week for people and the rest of the week I would play percussion.” — Russ Knutson

Because of his work at the CSO and elsewhere across the city, he got to know exactly what kinds of instruments his fellow percussionists preferred, some of which weren’t available at Franks Drum Shop or anywhere else at the time. “I bought the things that players wanted,” he said. “And because of that, my reputation grew among my colleagues, because I would provide what they really wanted.”

But he didn’t become fully committed to the rental business until about 35 years ago, around the time when Franks and another nearby shop, Drums Ltd., went out of business in part because of skyrocketing downtown rents.

While Knutson does have a webpage, he has grown his business almost entirely through word of mouth, and he now works with many of the major presenters in the Chicago area, including the Auditorium Theatre, Grant Park Music Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Ravinia Festival and many of the city’s Broadway theaters. “I’ve never really advertised,” he said. “I’ve never really solicited for business. I don’t have a brochure.”

But to make his business work, he has had to invest a great deal of money into his stock, because it is essential he has what musicians need when they need it. Many of the instruments are not cheap. A timpani can cost $3,000, for example, plus another $2,000 for a storage case. “I started at a time when things were cheaper,” he said, “and it was more affordable to buy this stuff, and I bought everything I could early on. And I still have to buy every year.”

For the most part, he buys new instruments. But he will occasionally purchase used instruments, preferably ones in mint condition. “That’s the best kind to buy, because you can get a good deal and you dust it off and it’s perfect,” he said.

But he has also purchased used instruments that need work. He bought a pair of chimes that needed 1½ years to be properly refurbished, and he spent $2,000 for retuning, restaining and other repairs to a xylophone he bought from a friend — a classic instrument from the 1920s that is still esteemed by today’s players.

As time went on, he also has added a few other items to his rental inventory, including music stands. He even works sometimes with other suppliers to provide string basses or other non-percussion instruments, allowing his renters to get everything they need from one firm.

Almost every major city in the United States, Knutson said, has at least one guy like him with a firm that provides percussion rentals, and he has become friends with some of them. “You have this camaraderie with this person who does what you do but 2,000 miles away,” he said.

The problem is that the financial side of his business doesn’t always work in his favor. To keep a client happy, sometimes he has to purchase a $1,000 instrument for one concert or set of concerts, like a tuned gong from Thailand, and he has little guarantee that he will be able to rent that instrument enough times to break even, let alone make a profit.

“That’s my problem, and that’s why no one does this,” he said with a laugh. “Who would be so stupid to put all this money into this and they don’t get the money out? That’s why I’m the only guy in the city who is stupid enough to do this.”

But getting rich is not Knutson’s main motivation. Instead, he finds fulfillment in filling a need for his fellow percussionists.

“I get a sense of satisfaction that I can do something that’s at a high level,” he said. “Everybody that uses the instruments realizes that I am doing them a service. If I wouldn’t do it, they would have a real problem finding someone to do everything I do.”