Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore formed Third Coast Percussion in 2005, and this album marks the quartet’s 20th year with world-premiere recordings of six compositions by experimental footwork producer Jlin, Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan, tabla master Zakir Hussain, violinist Jessie Montgomery, and Zimbabwean mbira and marimba player Musekiwa Chingodza. Hussain and Chingodza both perform on their pieces (Hussain passed away two months after the sessions), and Chingodza’s fizzy, buoyant mbira and clarion-strong singing on “Dzoka Kumba” make for a sparkling tune that’s both heart-stirring and danceable. Hussain uses patterns within patterns, creating churning ruminations and gently exploratory gestures, and on the first movement of Murmurs in Time he layers bols (syllables used as mnemonics in the learning of tabla) until they sound almost as hectic as the monkey chant from a Balinese kecak performance. Jlin, whose TCP commission Perspective was a 2023 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, adapts material from the “Kyrie Eleison” movement of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor for “Please Be Still,” turning it into a sly, mischievous music-box clockwork. Her piece also has the only backbeat on the album, and she really makes it count. Standard Stoppages is a beautiful headphone listen, because its mix carefully places instruments at different points in space—it creates a huge auditory environment even from the most delicate of sounds. (PM)

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