September 12, 2013
by Jack Walton

In June, Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion began a five-year term as artists-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame. The ensemble is already giving its new community an idea of the staggering amount of musical feats that a percussion group can achieve.

On Sunday at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, Third Coast Percussion presents groundbreaking works from modernist titans George Crumb and Steve Reich, scored for percussion ensemble and two pianos.

Pianists Amy Briggs and Daniel Schlosberg join Third Coast for the concert. Schlosberg is a fellow artist-in-residence at the Notre Dame music department, and Briggs is a touring and recording artist known for her interpretations of contemporary composers.

The program opens with a brief piece for percussion quartet, titled “Ritual Music,” composed by Third Coast member David Skidmore. He says the work serves as a virtuoso overture.

Crumb’s vast “Music for a Summer Evening” follows. A complete work in itself, it’s also the third book of the composer’s larger epic, “Makrokosmos.” Crumb’s oeuvre is generally avant-garde, but he is no cold academician. He grew up in West Virginia, and the region’s nature sounds permeate his compositions.

“He talks about how he thinks that every person has an acoustic that is structured into their hearing, and for him it’s the sounds of the Appalachian river valley,” Skidmore says. “It all informed the way he hears music and writes music.”

Skidmore says that although the piece “has an otherworldly quality” to it, it’s still grounded in tradition. There are direct schematic ties to Bartók’s earlier innovations and there’s a brief quotation of a D-sharp minor fugue from Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.”

“He’s dealing with the universal and the mystical — the mysteries of what it means to be human,” Skidmore says. “Then he puts it through a lens of Americana.”

The score requires the pianists to deploy extraordinary techniques, at times making the piano itself a percussion instrument. Meanwhile, the percussionists use a large inventory of devices, including glockenspiel, maracas, sleigh bells and quijada del asino — literally the jawbone of an ass.

“We use an actual donkey jawbone. It’s an amazing sound,” Skidmore says. “You strike the side of the jawbone and the teeth rattle.”

Reich’s experimental “Sextet” has five movements, framing the work fairly conventionally. Fast outer movements frame lyrical, slower inner passages. Skidmore says Reich uses other time-tested methods in the piece as well.

“A key element in almost all of Reich’s music is an idea that’s almost as old as music itself, which is a canon. One person plays a thing and another person plays the same thing, just slightly offset,” Skidmore says.

Elsewhere in the work, Reich operates in much more unusual ways. Briggs and Schlosberg will switch to synthesizers and the percussionists — Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and Sean Connors — have their versatility stretched to the limits.

In the second movement, two musicians use bows to play against the edges of their vibraphones, producing a winding melody by means of a mesmerizing tapestry of delicate, keening high notes.

“When people think of percussion, the first thing they think of is someone striking an object. This is the opposite,” Skidmore says. “There’s no attack sound. It’s all sustained, long tones.”

Polyrhythms abound in the piece, and Skidmore observes that listeners can engage with the work by trying out different counts with the music.

“You can tap your foot every two notes, every three notes or every four notes,” he says. “Any of these pulses should fit the music.”

At one point in the Crumb piece, the score calls for a precise melody line to be played by slide whistle. Although it’s not even a percussion instrument, it’s not an obstacle.

“In our world, it’s par for the course. We’re always being asked to do something we never thought we’d be asked to do. If a composer is writing an orchestra piece and there’s a slide whistle part, it just goes to a percussionist,” Skidmore says. “Anything that’s ‘other’ always goes to the percussionist.”

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