Part of a festival dedicated to composer György Ligeti
LIGETI Continuum
CERRONE Goldbeater’s Skin
LIGETI Poème Symphonique
LIGETI Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel
w/ Rachel Calloway, mezzo soprano
Chicago Concert Season
Each year, Third Coast Percussion presents 4-5 concerts of percussion music in their hometown of Chicago. In concert halls, theaters, and art galleries, the ensemble joins with world-renowned performers for programs that include premieres of new works for percussion alongside modern classic percussion music.
Upcoming Chicago Concerts
University of Chicago Presents
Friday, February 16, 2018
Past Chicago Concerts
Currents – Constellation
May 28
Featuring special guest Annika Socolofsky (violin)
Currents is TCP’s musical laboratory. The ensemble tries new things and plays new music for the first time at one of Chicago’s hippest underground venues.
KATIE YOUNG just water, no lemon (world premiere, Emerging Composers Partnership)
JOSÉ MARTÍNEZ Two Questions About Time (world premiere, Emerging Composers Partnership)
ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY bellow (world premiere, Emerging Composers Partnership)
THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Reaction Yield
JOHANNES FISCHER what is any ocean but a collection of drops
A Triptych: Earth, Moon, Peace
Works of Augusta Read Thomas, featuring Spektral Quartet and Third Coast Percussion
AUGUSTA READ THOMAS Resounding Earth
AUGUSTA READ THOMAS Selene
AUGUSTA READ THOMAS Chi
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Click here for more info.
MCA Chicago
April 23
Whisper(s): Matthew Duvall and guests
Chicago Humanities Festival
November 6, 2016
Already obsessed with different kinds of time—human time, the “spectral” time of sleep, the compressed cycles of insect noise—French composer Gérard Grisey was bowled over when he heard the percussive and regular emissions of pulsars, the super-dense remnants of stars that have gone super-nova. Third Coast Percussion perform the striking result, Le Noir de l’Etoile, an unforgettable composition for six percussionists and tape with the musicians surrounding the audience.
GÉRARD GRISEY Le Noir de l’Etoile
with special guests Gregory Beyer and John Corkill
Ear Taxi Festival – Blowout Party!
October 9, 2016
Ear Taxi Festival is a city-wide celebration of Chicago’s thriving contemporary music scene.
Featured performers include Mary Stolper, Kuang-Hao Huang, Third Coast Percussion, Spektral Quartet, MAVerick Ensemble, Fonema Consort, and Michael Hall.
Program to include works by Nicole Mitchell, Marc Mellits, LJ White, Christopher Jones (World Premiere), Aaron Cassidy (Chicago Premiere), and Marta Ptaszynska.
Ear Taxi Festival – Harris Theater
October 8, 2016
with special guests Spektral Quartet
Ear Taxi Festival is a city-wide celebration of Chicago’s thriving contemporary music scene.
THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Reaction Yield (world premiere)*
AUGUSTA READ THOMAS Selene (Chicago premiere)**
*Reaction Yield was commissioned by Glenn Prestwich and Sounds of Science
**Selene was co-commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center in honor of its 75th Anniversary Season, with generous support from Deborah and Philip Edmundson; and by Miller Theatre at Columbia University; and by Third Coast Percussion with the generous support of Sidney K. Robinson.
CANCELED: Currents – Constellation
July 31, 2016
This performance has been canceled. We apologize for any inconvenience.
The amazing Swiss/German EarDrum Duo joins TCP for an evening of European music at Constellation
NICOLAUS A. HUBER – Fingercapriccio
DIETER MACK – Jonico
JOHANNES FISCHER – What is any ocean but a collection of drops?
IANNIS XENAKIS – “Peaux” from Pleiades
Third Coast Percussion’s collaboration with Eardrum is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund.
Rush Hour Concerts
June 28, 2016
FREE!
Here & Now I
Featuring music by members of Third Coast Percussion!
Peter Martin- BEND
Robert Dillon- Ordering-instincts
David Skidmore- Take Anything You Want/Torched and Wrecked
Doors open at 5:00pm
Pre-concert conversations at 5:15pm
30-minute concert starts at 5:45pm
Broadcast live on 98.7 WFMT and wfmt.com
Logan Center Family Saturday Festival
June 18, 2016
Third Coast Percussion presents its interactive WAVES program, exploring the science behind sound, as part of the Logan Center for the Arts Family Saturday Festival.
$5 single tickets, $20 families of 5+
University of Chicago Presents
February 5, 2016
7:30 p.m.
Third Coast Percussion brings the idea of using a single type of material in performance—a wood table, in the case of Belgian composer Thierry de Mey’s piece, and a drumhead in Donnacha Dennehy’s new work inspired by playing techniques of the Irish bodhrán drum. The ensemble rounds out the program by honoring Steve Reich’s 80th birthday with his iconic Sextet, in celebration of the ensemble’s release of an all-Reich album on Cedille Records
THIERRY DE MEY Table Music
DONNACHA DENNEHY Surface Tension (Chicago premiere, commissioned for Third Coast Percussion)
STEVE REICH Sextet
Click here to purchase tickets.
Surface Tension was commissioned by the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additional funding provided by the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation.
Chinese Fine Arts Society – Art Institute of Chicago
November 15, 2015
TIANGE ZHOU Beginning of Origin
KUI DONG Scattered Ladder
LEI LIANG Inkscape (Chicago premiere, co-commissioned by the Chinese Fine Arts Society)
featuring Daniel Schlosberg, piano and Michael Lewanski, conductor
GUO WENJING Parade
$15/$20
Northwestern University
November 7, 2015
FREE and open to the public
This event is not ticketed
Third Coast Percussion is ensemble-in-residence at the 2nd annual Northwestern University New Music Conference (NUNC)
ISAAC SCHANKLER – Blindnesses
STEVEN SNOWDEN – A Man with a Gun Lives Here
CHRIS FISHER-LOCHHEAD – On Tenterhooks (commissioned by Third Coast Percussion)
CARL SCHIMMEL – Serving Size 4 Bunnies
Rush Hour Concerts
August 18, 2015
Doors open at 5:15pm; performance begins at 5:45
Free
St James Cathedral, Chicago
Third Coast Percussion returns to Rush Hour Concerts with a program of music composed for the ensemble by Chicago-based composers, including excerpts from Glenn Kotche’s “Wild Sound” and Augusta Read Thomas’s “Resounding Earth,” and TCP member David Skidmore’s newest work, “Trying.”
Downtown Sound: “In C” in Millennium Park
June 25, 2015
6:30pm- Free
Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park
Third Coast Percussion celebrates the 80th birthday of Terry Riley with an epic performance of Riley’s master piece “In C.” TCP will lead an ensemble of 80 of Chicago’s finest musicians brought together for this occasion, including stars of Chicago’s contemporary, classical, jazz and rock scenes, and students from local universities, youth orchestras and community music schools. Join us for this celebration of the joy of collective music making!
Featuring musicians from: Fifth House Ensemble, Grant Wallace Band, Mocrep, New Music Chicago, North Shore Concert Band, Parlour Tapes+, Spektral Quartet, Ursa Ensemble, DePaul University Ensemble 20+, Northern Illinois University, Merit School of Music, Mucca Pazza and more!
Grammy-winning big band Snarky Puppy will perform immediately following.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for The Arts.
MCA Stage – 2
May 22, 2015
2 nights!
“Wild Sound”
featuring guest artist Glenn Kotche on drumset
KOTCHE Solo Piece TBD
REICH Music for Drums
REICH Nagoya Marimbas
KOTCHE Drumkit Quartet #51
KOTCHE Wild Sound
Wild Sound was commissioned by the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund. Additional support provided by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series.
MCA Stage – 1
May 21, 2015
2 nights!
“Wild Sound”
featuring guest artist Glenn Kotche on drumset
KOTCHE Solo Piece TBD
REICH Music for Drums
REICH Nagoya Marimbas
KOTCHE Drumkit Quartet #51
KOTCHE Wild Sound
Wild Sound was commissioned by the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund. Additional support provided by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series.
“Currents” at Constellation
March 15, 2015
8:30 p.m. Doors at 8 p.m.
Featuring guest artists Rachel Beetz (flute) and Ross Karre (percussion)
APPLEBAUM Straitjacket
PFEFFER Jonathan was killed in battle against the Philistines (World Premiere, TCP commission- Emerging Composers Partnership)
CUTHBERT New Work (World Premiere, TCP commission)
DILLON Ordering-instincts
SOREY Trio for Harold Budd
TCP launches a new concert initiative, Currents, as part of their Chicago Concert Season, featuring premieres of newly commissioned works by emerging composers and other unique, boundary-pushing repertoire from today’s most creative thinkers. This first Currents concert includes new works by Adam Cuthbert and Third Coast’s own Robert Dillon, as well as a new work commissioned through our Emerging Composers Partnership by Jonathan Pfeffer. Percussionist extraordinaire Ross Karre joins TCP for Mark Applebaum’s kooky and inventive Straitjacket, and contemporary flute master Rachel Beetz joins TCP for Tyshawn Sorey’s Trio for Harold Budd.
This event is 18 and over, and may contain offensive language or other adult content.
This concert is supported in part by a grant from the Paul R. Judy Center for Applied Research at the Eastman School of Music. Jonathan Pfeffer’s new work was commissioned by New Music USA through Third Coast Percussion’s Emerging Composers Partnership. To follow the project as it unfolds visit the New Music USA project page. Ordering-instinctswas supported by the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame, in honor of the center’s 10th Anniversary Season.
University of Chicago Presents
November 1, 2014
7:30 p.m.
“Haunt of Last Nightfall”
CAGE Credo in US
RZEWSKI Coming Together
LITTLE Haunt of Last Nightfall
This concert is the culminating event in a week of activities looking at the tragic events that occurred in the small town of El Mozote, El Salvador during that country’s civil war in the 1980’s. These events inspired composer David T. Little’s work for Third Coast Percussion entitled Haunt of Last Nightfall. Events leading up to the performance include a display of photographer Susan Meiselas’s photography from the event, and panel discussions including the composer and leaders in the field of history and human rights in El Salvador, including Oscar Chacon, Joaquin Chavez, Eric Stover, and Susan Gzesh.
The concert also includes works from Frederic Rzewski (a major influence on Little) and John Cage (a major influence on Rzewski) – all musical works which respond to historic events in radically different ways.
University of Chicago Residency Week
Learn more about El Mozote.
Info about the concert.
Commemorating El Mozote at the University of Chicago.
Rush Hour Concerts
August 26, 2014
Millennium Park – Loops and Variations
June 12, 2014
6:30 p.m.
TCP goes on at 7:30 p.m.
Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park
A program featuring all new music by Chicago composers, including Augusta Read Thomas’s epic “Resounding Earth,” scored for over 125 bells from around the world. We are sharing the bill with Brooklyn-based grit pop band Ghost Beach.
OWEN CLAYTON CONDON Fractalia
MARC MELLITS Gravity
DAVID SKIDMORE Percussion Quartets
AUGUSTA READ THOMAS Resounding Earth
Chicago Cultural Center
April 13, 2014
Preston Bradley Hall- 3:00 p.m.
Free
ANDRES Austerity Measures (TCP commission, Chicago premiere)
HJERTMANN Automatic Glitch (TCP commission, World premiere)
SKIDMORE Trying (World premiere)
Third Coast Percussion closes out the 2013-14 Chicago Concert Season with a program of all new works by rising stars of American composition. Timo Andres’ Austerity Measures uses Bach’s first two-part invention as a jumping off point for a journey through unimagined sound worlds. The first work commissioned through TCP’s new Emerging Composers Partnership, Chicagoan Ben Hjertmann’s Automatic Glitch recreates complex electronic effects acoustically with 4 identical drum sets, and ensemble member David Skidmore brings us a new work for keyboard instruments and tuned pieces of wood and metal.
University of Chicago Presents – Resounding Earth
February 21, 2014
7:30 p.m.
GUO WENJING Parade
CAGE Third Construction
THOMAS Resounding Earth (Chicago Premiere)
Post-concert discussion with Augusta Read Thomas and Third Coast Percussion
University of Chicago Residency Week
“dark rooms”
December 8, 2013
8:30 p.m. (doors at 8:00 p.m.)
$20/$10 Click here for tickets
BALTER dark rooms (TCP commission)
FISHER-LOCHHEAD On Tenterhooks (TCP commission, world premiere)
HEARNE Thaw (TCP commission)
SHAW Taxidermy
WOHL Pixelated
WOLFE Dark Full Ride
Third Coast returns to Constellation with “dark rooms,” an evening of extreme sensory stimuli, featuring music by America’s most innovative and omnivorous young composers. Marcos Balter (who was recently named to a Guggenheim Fellowship) composed dark rooms for Third Coast Percussion in 2007, one of TCP’s first commissioned works. It consists of 5 miniatures that each create their own unique sonic spaces, ranging from delicate to brutal, rave-like to mysterious. Chris Fisher-Lochhead’s brand new work explores the limits of rhythmic complexity while drawing curious colors from a broad arsenal of wood, metal and glass objects. In Ted Hearne’s Thaw, (recently recorded for Parlour Tapes’ *AND album) intensifying drums break through a wall of icy glockenspiel, and Caroline Shaw’s sparse Taxidermy features a dozen flower pots with meditative marimba and vibraphone accompaniment. Toy piano, metal keyboards and electronic sounds make up Daniel Wohl’s funky and ecstatic Pixelated, and the quartet rocks out on 4 drum sets in Julia Wolfe’s Dark Full Ride.
Constellation – Frequency Series
October 20, 2013
Third Coast Percussion presents
“Infinitesimal Machinery”
Thierry De Mey – Musique de Tables
Nathan Davis – Simple Songs of Birth and Return
John Cage – Branches
David Lang – The So-Called Laws of Nature (part 3)
John Cage- Duet for Cymbal
Thomas Meadowcroft – The Great Knot
TCP opens their 2013-14 Chicago Concert Season with their first performance at Chicago’s hip new venue Constellation, in a program that zooms in on tiny instruments to explore miniature sound worlds.
8:30 p.m. (doors open at 8:00 p.m.)
Click here to purchase tickets
This event is part of Chicago Artists Month 2013, the 18th annual celebration of Chicago’s vibrant art community presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. For more information, visit www.chicagoartistsmonth.
8:00 p.m.
$20/$15 students and seniors
APPLEBAUM Wrist Watch Geology
TYMOCZKO Rock Dots (Chicago premiere)
LUNSQUI Shi
INGEBRISTEN Improvisation in an Altered State (world premiere)
MUHLY Pillaging Music
MELLITS Gravity (U.S. premiere)
For our final Chicago concert of the season, we have crafted an evening of musical mayhem for Mayne Stage’s intimate club atmosphere. The program blends rock, Renaissance counterpoint and electronic surround sound as we strike, rub and shake whisky bottles, grill grates, chopsticks, and more. This performance includes premieres by Chicago composers Marc Mellits and Ryan Ingebritsen.
Makro-American: Crumb/Reich – Merit School of Music
March 8, 2013
“Makro-American: Crumb/Reich”
Featuring pianists Timothy Andres and David Kaplan
7:30 p.m.
$15/$10 students and seniors
Third Coast Percussion welcomes pianists Timothy Andres and David Kaplan for masterworks by two of America’s most prized composers. George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening is a fractured evocation of nature and the cosmos, while Steve Reich’s Sextet creates a steady drive of interlocking melodic patterns on a variety of keyboards.
CRUMB Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III)
REICH Sextet
International House at the University of Chicago – “Metal”
January 11, 2013
“Metal”
Chicago Concert Season
7:30 p.m.
$15/$10 students and seniors
An evening of music for instruments made of metal, from the meditative resonance of Thai gongs to the driving clang of pots and pans. Program features the Chicago premiere of Philippe Manoury’s Métal, featuring custom-made metal keyboards that surround the audience.
CAGE First Construction
TENNEY Koan: Having Never Written a Note for Percussion
LANG Anvil Chorus
MANOURY Métal
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Click here to watch video of TCP performing on Sixxen, built by members of the ensemble.
John Luther Adams “Inuksuit”
August 26, 2012
Performance of JLA’s 99-person outdoor drum and fife extravaganza. Hosted by Eighth Blackbird and Chicago’s newest intrepid percussion event organizer, Doug Perkins.