From concert and album reviews to feature articles, Third Coast Percussion is in the news.
We are fortunate to have garnered critical acclaim and recognition for so many of our performances and projects. See for yourself what the buzz is all about by reading what the press has to say! Browse reviews, articles, and much more below.
Gary native and Pulitzer Prize finalist Jlin teams with TCP for upcoming landmark events
October 9, 2026, by Elaine Hegwood Bowen, M.S.J.
Third Coast Percussion (TCP), a GRAMMY Award-winning Chicago-based percussion quartet and GRAMMY-nominated composer collective, announces the Chicago engagements for its 2026-2027 season. On Thursday, October 15, at 7:30 p.m., TCP presents a new original program, Vernacular, in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize finalist and electronic music artist Jlin, with its Chicago Premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (220 E. Chicago Ave.), co-presented by Chicago Humanities. For more information, visit MCAchicago.org. Premonition is one of two new pieces commissioned for TCP and Jlin by the 92nd Street Y, New York. The single is available to stream on all platforms. The five musicians will perform live on stage together in brand new arrangements of some of Jlin’s most exciting works in a program steeped in their shared Chicago roots. All together, they combine for a fresh sound, blending TCP’s contemporary classical training with Jlin’s signature electronic technique. While Jlin has composed…
Jlin & Third Coast Percussion present Vernacular at Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ
October 7, 2026, by IamExpat
What happens when one of today’s most adventurous electronic musicians joins forces with one of the world’s leading percussion ensembles? Find out on November 11, 2026, at Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam. Chamber music for the dance floor in Amsterdam In Vernacular, Chicago producer Jlin and Grammy-winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion create a live performance where electronic sound and percussion meet head-on. The result is sharp, physical and full of detail: music that draws equally from contemporary composition and club culture, and that feels as suited to the concert hall as to the dance floor. On November 11, 2026, this distinctive collaboration comes to Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ for an evening of electronic and acoustic realisations of Jlin’s compositions. For expats looking for a concert that moves beyond the familiar categories of classical, electronic and experimental music, Vernacular offers a compelling place to start. Get your tickets now! Jlin Jlin has become one of the most…
Grammy-winning group beats the drum for new music
September 23, 2026, by Heather Zimmerman
Percussion is everywhere, keeping the beat in just about any type of music. But only relatively recently have composers written specifically for it — and that’s still rarer than music for other instruments. For 20 years, Third Coast Percussion has made strides in raising the profile of composed percussion music, particularly in commissioning and performing new works. In 2017, the quartet became the first percussion group to win a Grammy Award in the classical genre, and the group has gone on to receive further nominations, as well as for individual members. Additionally, Third Coast Percussion has commissioned over 100 new works from composers such as Zakir Hussain, Philip Glass, Danny Elfman, Jessie Montgomery and Clarice Assad, as well as pieces by new and emerging composers. Local audiences will get a chance to hear some of those pieces when the Chicago-based all-percussion chamber ensemble performs Sept. 26 at a concert hosted by Portola…
Fireworks, musical and literal, with Kalmar, Third Coast Percussion and GPO
July 9, 2026, by Tim Sawyier
On Wednesday night Carlos Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra seemed to pick up right where they left off at the end of the Austrian conductor’s 24-year tenure as music director two years ago. In the second of two Kalmar-led programs, the GPO played with fluent rapport in a lineup featuring a 21st-century concerto and a Romantic warhorse that recalled Kalmar’s inspired programming throughout his time at the orchestra’s helm. The evening opened with the Chicago premiere of Drum Circles, a five-movement concertante work by Christopher Theofanidis that featured Chicago’s own Third Coast Percussion in their Grant Park debut. Kalmar led the world premiere of the work with the Oregon Symphony in 2019, and his fluency with the score came through in his deft direction. The opening movement “Rivers and Anthems” begins with shimmering tintinnabulation in the xylophones, its modal proclamations punctuated by chimes. The solo quartet is rhythmically at odds with…
TCP shows future of percussion music is bright in Currents program
June 12, 2026, by Katherine Buzard
As severe weather alerts pinged patrons’ phones, the musicians of Third Coast Percussion were just beginning their annual Currents concert. Fortunately, the audience was blissfully unaware of the storm raging outside the windowless theater as the electronic chimes blended in with the dulcet tones of the marimba. Thursday night’s concert featured three premieres from TCP’s Currents Creative Partnership, a program that mentors composers at the beginning of their careers or who want to explore percussion repertoire. The results were accomplished, varied, and innovative, showcasing the Grammy-winning ensemble’s virtuosity across different instruments and styles and their willingness to experiment and explore. The concert was held at Constellation, a small venue in a former Roscoe Village warehouse that presents jazz, experimental, and contemporary classical music. The intimate black-box theater setting, with just a few rows of seats flanking the artists on three sides, proved an ideal way to experience this music, allowing audience…
Third Coast Percussion celebrates their 20th anniversary in a showcase concert in Cleveland
March 25, 2026, by Mark Sebastian Jordan
Chicago’s formidable Third Coast Percussion has been touring in celebration of their twentieth anniversary as an ensemble, and an audience in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music was dazzled by their performance. The hall has a glass wall at the back of the stage that lets afternoon light into the room, and the only clue the performance was about to begin was a subtle shift of the stage lights. The members of the ensemble – Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore – wandered on stage one by one, playing wooden combs and delicate music boxes in Danny Clay’s 2016 piece ‘Teeth’, an unexpected and ear-tickling opener. Without pause, they continued into ‘Niagara’, a 2016 fantasy written collaboratively by the four players which casts different layers of movement over a bass synth pattern. With this bold start, they established the concept of the first half of…
Review: Nova Linea Musica Presents Third Coast Percussion Program, “The Drum Also Sings”
February 28, 2026, by Kathy D. Hey
Nova Linea Musica presented The Drum Also Sings, an hour long concert by Third Coast Percussion at the Merit School of Music on Wednesday. NLM and Third Coast Percussion are known for commissioning new work from Chicago musicians. The acoustically perfect Guarneri Hall is the usual location for NLM programs, but TCP has quite an array of instruments and sound-making devices that would leave no room for an audience. The Merit School of Music in the West Loop provided a perfect venue for a marimba, drums, and several other percussion instruments. The auditorium could also accommodate students from Merit, providing an inspiring experience and great enjoyment for future performers. Having met while students at Northwestern, TCP is a quartet of percussionists Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore. They have been playing together for 26 years and counting. One of the featured pieces of the evening was a brand…
ON the Beat | On the Plugged/Unplugged Trail
February 27, 2026, by Josef Woodard
In some circles, the worlds of digital music creation and the old-fashioned methodology — of hitting, plucking, bowing, and otherwise producing sound from physical instruments in real time — occupy their own separate orbits. But the twain can meet, and with artistically fruitful results, as heard at Campbell Hall last week. In this special case, a show hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L), the skilled percussionist adventurers in the Chicagoan Third Coast Percussion (TCP) crossed paths with inspired minimalist electronician Jlin (born Jerrilynn Patton). Campbell Hall was duly transformed into an entrancing groove house, an artsy party zone. This was a special occasion for the performers and audience alike, a kind of warm-up and preview for both a recording project and a future official tour. If there remains any question that groove music and minimalism are or aren’t joined at the hip, this concert settled the debate. Aside from its predominant focus on music composed by Jlin — performed with…
Third Coast Percussion goes lean for premieres at Gottlieb Hall
February 26, 2026, by Landon Hegedus
Nova Linea Musica, one of Chicago’s most interesting new chamber music series, returned on Wednesday night with a performance by Chicago’s own contemporary percussion emissaries, Third Coast Percussion. Departing its usual venue at Guarneri Hall on this occasion for roomier digs at Merit School of Music’s Gottlieb Hall, the dynamic series’ directive remains the same: Engage artists to commission new works by living composers and premiere those works in an intimate, salon-esque setting. Third Coast Percussion, consisting of ensemble members David Skidmore, Sean Connors, Peter Martin, and Robert Dillon, was also in typically fine form on this outing. Wednesday evening’s program was a grab bag of modern percussion literature that spotlighted short, accessible, and conceptually focused works. Despite the more spacious outpost, Third Coast’s setup remained compact, at least by the ensemble’s standards. In fact, creative constraint was one of the themes of the program. This was particularly true of…
Drum Roles — Two decades in, Third Coast Percussion continues to push its sound in new directions.
January 31, 2026, by Jessi Roti
It's admittedly "a little silly" for all four members of Third Coast Percussion to gather around a single marimba, says founding member David Skidmore. But that's exactly the scenario the chamber music quartet asked rising composer JaRon Brown to create with the new work This Too Shall Pass. Skidmore describes "dancing around each other" to perform it, which undoubtedly necessitates some functional choreography. He adds, "JaRon's music is really thoughtfully put together, with a sense of lightness, fun, and whimsy." (Third Coast once performed a piece by the South Carolina composer that's meant to mimic the feeling of having butterflies in your stomach.) This Too Shall Pass gets its world premiere February 25 as part of Third Coast's concert at Gottlieb Hall in the West Loop. Taking on a new challenge is very much in the DNA of the acclaimed group, which celebrated two decades together in 2025. Its anniversary…
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