Featuring a world premiere by Georg Friedrich Haas.
PETER MARTIN BEND
ALEXANDRE LUNSQUI Shi
AYANNA WOODS Triple Point
RODRIGO BUSSAD Kodama *world premiere*
GEORG FRIEDRICH HAAS Iguazú superior, antes de descender por la Garganta del Diablo *world premiere*
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Learn more about our two world premiere works below:
São Paulo-born composer Rodrigo Bussad is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in Composition at The University of Chicago. He has won numerous awards, including the Student Division and Professional Chamber Music Division of the American Prize in Composition, Ukho Ensemble Workshop and the Valencia International Performance Academy (VIPA). He says of his new work, “Kodama”:
“In Japanese lore, the term Kodama has many different meanings in different eras. Kodama were said to be spirits, nature deities that dwelled in trees…But they were also a sound; echoes that reverberated through mountains and valleys were said to be Kodama…
In composing this work for Third Coast Percussion, I met with the quartet for a series of workshops. I began by gathering different instruments that could be combined into a collection of sounds that could act as one instrument. I tried to find the inner voice of this new instrument, and create musical ideas that are interlaced with the physicality of the instrument itself.”
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Georg Friedrich Haas has emerged as one of the most significant composers of his generation. His music draws on the grand orchestral tradition of his native Austria, as well as recent movements in experimental and modernist music. Haas’s works often make use of microtonality, spectralism, and lighting as an integral part of a score, creating music that is spacious, immersive, and otherworldly.
Iguazú superior, antes de descender por la Garganta del Diablo
(“Upper Iguazú, before descending through the Devil’s Throat”)
Iguazú Falls, on the border of Brazil and Argentina, is (by some measures) the largest waterfall system in the world. The falls divide the Iguazú River into its upper (“superior”) and lower (“inferior”) segments, with about half of the river’s water flow dropping through a narrow chasm known as “The Devil’s Throat,” about 75 feet taller than Niagara Falls.
Haas’s percussion quartet stands out among his decades of tonally innovative music as a work focused on rhythm and texture, with no defined pitch. The 30-minute piece maintains a relentless momentum that persists even as textures thicken and thin, the music becomes louder and quieter, and new sounds are introduced. As the quartet emerges into sections that bubble gently, dart frenetically, or lock into angular, asymmetrical rhythms, it is always being pulled forward. Beneath it all is a rhythmic concept Haas first explored in his Three Pieces for Mollena — a constant tempo acceleration, which is sustained by occasionally introducing slower, related rhythms. Sometimes known as a “Risset Rhythm,” this is the rhythmic equivalent to the “Shepard Tone” used in many of Haas’s other works—an aural illusion of eternally rising pitch.
Iguazú superior, antes de descender por la Garganta del Diablo was commissioned by the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, with additional support from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University and the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. It was written for Third Coast Percussion.
Third Coast Percussion would like to an extend an additional thanks to the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation, whose support of TCP’s Creative Workshop allowed for the development, workshopping, and preparation of this new work.
