March 18, 2016
by Joshua Kosman

With each passing year, the work of the pioneering minimalist composers — Steve Reich chief among them — moves further from being the private domain of the creators and their performing associates to take a place in the standard repertoire. That means that a recording as splendid and distinctive as this new release by the Chicago quartet Third Coast Percussion is, in its own way, comparable to another ensemble playing Beethoven or Stravinsky.

And you can hear in the group’s playing just how easily this music comes to them — the rhythms both loose-limbed and precise, the textures finely worked out but wonderfully natural. The ensemble, which comes to San Francisco for a recital on March 28, offers a full tour of Reich’s stylistic range, from the terse experimentalism of the early “Music for Pieces of Wood,” in a dry but evocative performance, to the blissed-out pop sensibilities of “Nagoya Marimbas” and the unpredictable rhythmic patterns of “Mallet Quartet.” Sitting in the middle of the disc like a behemoth is the wonderfully craggy “Sextet,” which may be as close as Reich has ever come to Expressionism.

Click here to read original article.

« Previous post: New Releases: Third Coast Percussion & Steve Reich

Next post: Recording of the Week: Third Coast Percussion, Steve Reich »