SF Symphony percussionist Jacob Nissly is a master at keeping time

Being a classical percussionist requires an array of musical skills, including a keen rhythmic sense, mastery of sonority and dynamics, and the ability to serve as the anchor for a large ensemble.

But also, promptness.

“There’s a rule of thumb in percussion,” says Jacob Nissly, the San Francisco Symphony’s brash young principal, “that if you’re not an hour early for rehearsal, you’re late.”

The reason isn’t hard to see. While everyone else in the orchestra is playing just one instrument at a time (sometimes two if the woodwind players have to double) the members of the percussion section are often tasked with a vast array of musical tools for hitting, stroking, banging and clanging — everything from snare drum and triangle to xylophone, gongs and chimes.

Figuring out how to situate all that musical hardware is a big part of Nissly’s job.

“So much of what we do is based on choreography and stage plots,” he says. “I’m usually here every Monday for a couple hours with the stage crew, figuring out how we can set up a taiko and chimes, when I know that person A has to go ticka-ticka-DUM-two-three-four and then turn to pick up the other mallets without tripping over person B.”

Just in the first few weeks of the Symphony season, Nissly and the members of the section he’s overseen since arriving in San Francisco in 2013 have luxuriated in the eclecticism of their assignments.

“I played with Metallica to open the season,” he says. “I played a djembe (a West African drum) in John Adams’ ‘I Still Dance.’ I swung an enormous hammer in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.”

Now all of Nissly’s talents — both musical and logistical — will be put to the test beginning Thursday, Oct. 17, when he takes the solo role in the world premiere of “Losing Earth,” a percussion concerto commissioned for him by the Symphony from composer Adam Schoenberg.

The piece has an ecological theme, but Nissly, 36, prefers to leave discussion of that aspect to Schoenberg, a longtime close friend since their days together at the Juilliard School of Music in New York (and no relation to the famous creator of the twelve-tone system). He’s got his hands full with the music, which draws in part on Nissly’s teenage experience in marching bands.

The setup itself is a marvel of intricacy, centered on a conglomeration of instruments — kick drum, snare, bongos, temple blocks, xylophones and others — that Nissly and Schoenberg dubbed the “Frankenstein drum set.” There are two of them, one on the stage and a portable version that Nissly can tote on his back while marching through the hall. There will be six other percussionists scattered around the hall, for what he calls a “Sensurround” effect.

“Adam is super open to taking ideas from wherever they come,” says Nissly. “I was just firm that we had to agree on the basic setup early on, because it’s like learning a new instrument every time. After that he can write what he wants, but there’s no way to add a bunch of cowbells or six more tom-toms later on.”

Nissly, who has the ready grin and easy charisma of a younger Matt Damon, grew up in the suburbs of Des Moines, Iowa, and came to music through rock and pop. His father was a rock ‘n’ roll drummer. His grandmother, who subscribed to DownBeat magazine, turned him on to Charlie Parker.

“She was hipper than I knew at the time. I just thought it was normal that my Irish Catholic grandmother in rural Iowa had a subscription to DownBeat.”

Nissly edged slowly into the classical world, taking marimba lessons and winning a spot in the Des Moines Youth Symphony. But he says a lot of his formative influences come from listening to Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel and playing the results by ear. By the time he’d graduated from Northwestern University — where he’d gone with the intention of majoring in economics — and gone on to Juilliard, he still felt like a newbie compared to his more experienced peers.

He and Schoenberg first crossed paths during preparations for an early rehearsal of Juilliard’s contemporary music ensemble. Seeing the name A. Schoenberg among the composers listed, Nissly made the natural assumption that this was Arnold — whose music, though knotty, requires little physical setup from a percussionist — and left it to the end.

“So I get to the last one, and it calls for … oxygen tanks? He wrote for oxygen tanks. Which meant, (a) where are they, because I’m the new guy here. And, (b) now I have to break down everything and move it around, and meanwhile I’m holding up the entire rehearsal.

“I remember making a beeline for Adam afterward and saying, ‘Hey man, what are you doing?’ And he’s like, ‘Sorry, I write what I hear.’ It wasn’t the most amicable of meetings, but we got to be close friends right away.”

Nissly is the kind of virtuoso who fills the percussion world nowadays, in a massive shift from what it was decades ago. He relishes the stories he’s heard from veteran musicians about the days when the role of the fourth percussionist would be filled by someone from the back stands of the violins.

“The skill set to be a percussionist has grown exponentially in the last 50 years. It used to be, ‘Do you have a pair of sticks and can you come in at the right spot?’ But now you’ll see all of us playing everything.

“I don’t take myself too seriously, but I do insist on the same degree of respect for percussionists as anyone else in the orchestra, even if we may have more measures of rest. The analogy I like to use is that we’re like firefighters. We sit around, sit around, sit around — and then oh my God, go now!”

San Francisco Symphony: 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17-Saturday, Oct. 19. $20-$160. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F. 415-864-600. www.sfsymphony.org

Your weekly guide to Bay Area arts & entertainment.