Isaac Gould began hitting things early in life, a passion that was somewhat channeled by seven years of piano lessons (an instrument he began to enjoy once he stopped taking lessons at age 14), but he discovered the joys of percussion at some point in elementary school. After passing up an opportunity to buy a drum set around fifth grade, his future as an auxiliary percussionist was sealed. Things really took off in his senior year of high school, when he began playing in the drum line, regularly stayed after school to jam with the percussion section on hand drums, and played congas at church. During college at Moody Bible Institute, Isaac routinely raided the Missions department’s ethnic percussion room, and accompanied worship teams with everything from Pringles cans to Indonesian doumbeks to African talking drums.
Toward the end of college, he borrowed a hammered dulcimer from a friend to try to figure out this instrument that had long intrigued him, having been a lifelong fan of Rich Mullins’s music. A year later he had his own dulcimer and was arranging hymns and improvising in his own style. Amidst brief (and seldom appreciated) forays into the didgeridoo, he has enjoyed being a concert percussionist and small ensemble player. Isaac has returned to Cincinnati after a year teaching international students in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he learned how to play a local tambourine-like hand drum, the doira, by watching music videos on TV.
