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 the concert: a selection of some of TCP’s greatest moments from the last twenty years, as featured in their concerts, on several albums and even on an appearance on National Public Radio’s famous Tiny Desk Concerts.

Next up was the quartet’s arrangement of ‘The Hero’ from Archetypes, Brazilian-American composer Clarice Assad’s 2019/2020 piece. It proved to be a driving toccata in motoric rhythms for marimba and vibraphones, with accents from beatbox, maracas, cymbals and more. The players’ finely coordinated accuracy was breathtaking. Steve Reich’s 1973 ‘Music for Pieces of Wood’ is just that, four pitched blocks of wood hit with wooden sticks. It doesn’t sound like much to work with, but the genius of the piece is the way each player is given a distinctive set of rhythms, making the work an entertaining exercise in sorting out different layers with the ears.

The first of two pieces by US composer Jlin – the stage name of Jerrilyn Patton – came next. ‘Obscure’ started with a low cloud of sound from the marimba and strange, almost human cries from the vibraphone, achieved by bowing notes and then rubbing the top of the metal bar with a flexible mallet. As notes clarified, it became evident that the piece is quite fast in tempo, though it often returned to moments of mysterious obscurity as it developed. The first half closed with TCP’s arrangement of Metamorphosis No.1 by Philip Glass, originally for piano. Not only did this arrangement considerably diversify the expressive sound of the original, it also extrapolated many new extensions not in the original work, turning the meditative piece into a tour de force.

The second half of the concert featured works specifically commissioned by TCP, starting with Jlin’s ‘Please Be Still’, an instruction almost impossible to obey as the danceable piece took shape. The most dazzling work in the concert followed, Jessie Montgomery’s Lady Justice/Black Justice, The Song, written in 2024. It covered the entire range from delicacy to imposing roar and introduced the beguiling cry of crotales finger-cymbals dunked into bowls of water, a startling and moving sound all the more astonishing as it came during one of the piece’s fastest sections. Watching the players move from instrument to instrument among the dozens on stage, mastering each while closely watching, coordinating with and encouraging each other, offers hints about why they have thrived for so long. More than just a musical ensemble, they become a unified musical entity. Next came ‘Ancient Whisperer’, a 2025 work by the Bosnian composer David Mastikosa inspired by bird calls. Mysterious and evocative, the piece featured the only prominent use in these works of the characteristic fans of the vibraphone.

The concert closed with the largest piece, Tigran Hamasyan’s imposing Sonata for Percussion (2024), the most classical work so far from a musician more known for his activities in the jazz and progressive rock worlds. The first movement opened with a 23-beat rhythmic cycle which, at first, was easy enough to follow as it simply dropped a half beat from a standard 24-beat pattern. But that soon changed as players were given their own variant patterns which introduced a world of almost infinite complexities while the music still had a recognizable groove. The second movement was haunting and elusive, and the finale returned to intriguing rhythmical fractals, again built on variations of a 23-beat pattern, this time taking place at a blistering tempo. The players navigated the ferociously difficult music with absolute assurance, leaving listeners stunned but cheering at the end. One can only hope Third Coast Percussion has a great many years ahead of them and will return regularly to share their vision of a new future for classical music, one that can dance and play without yielding a bit of daring exploration.

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