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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.
Musical America: Third Coast Percussion Throws Itself a Festival
July 8, 2025, by Hannah Edgar
CHICAGO—In the summer of 2005, four young percussionists gave their first performance as a standalone quartet at Northwestern University, where they’d all studied. Twenty years, a Grammy, and a couple lineup changes later, that group has become one of the country’s leading ensembles of its kind: Third Coast Percussion, Chicago-based but heard everywhere. On June 28, the group marked that milestone with Rhythm Fest, an epic, all-day bash at the Epiphany Center for the Arts on the city’s near west side. For ten hours, collaborators new and old took over the converted church complex, from original Third Coast members (Jacob Nissly, now of the San Francisco Symphony) to recent collaborators (Salar Nader, a tabla virtuoso). Though working with a fraction of the budget of major summer music festivals like Lollapalooza or the Chicago Jazz Fest, Rhythm Fest set a high bar. Operations were smooth, even elegant: A wristband combo—one signaling…
Classical Music: Third Coast Percussion marks 20th anniversary
, by Classical Music
Chicago percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion (TCP) celebrates its 20th anniversary this season. The first percussion ensemble to win a Grammy award, TCP comprises Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore. The quartet has undertaken a landmark season, including a performance at Carnegie Hall, plus collaborations with composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery and Twyla Tharp Dance. As well as a long-awaited return to performing in Germany, TCP's anniversary season has also featured a host of works commissioned and premiered by the ensemble. Skidmore said: 'Our aspiration from the beginning was to support ourselves with a career performing the music that we love all over the world. We're incredibly fortunate to have realised that goal, and in doing so to have helped raise the profile of classical percussion music. What I don't think we could have ever imagined though, was how this path would change us both musically and…
Third Coast Review: Review: Third Coast Percussion Celebrates 20 Years with Rhythm Fest at Epiphany Center
July 3, 2025, by Louis Harris
In a day-long festival of new music, Grammy Award winner Third Coast Percussion celebrated 20 years of making magical music in Chicago. In hosting Rhythm Fest, this percussion quartet of David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors brought together several of the composers with whom it has collaborated and local ensembles who have contributed to Chicago’s incredible contemporary music scene. The venue was the Epiphany Center for Performing Arts on the Near West Side, within which there are several performance spaces that accommodate various musical activities taking place at the same time. Composers and artists who performed include Jlin, Jessie Montgomery, Conrad Tao, Tyondai Braxton, Clarice Assad, Ensemble Dal Niente, the saxophone quartet ~Nois, and, of course, Third Coast Percussion. The emphasis was on rhythm, and everyone provided something percussive in their performances. A very enjoyable performance was offered by a string quintet headed by cellist and composer…
Textura: Standard Stoppages Review
June 17, 2025, by Nolan Ehlers
With Standard Stoppages, Third Coast Percussion celebrates its twentieth year of existence. As significant, the seventy-minute collection shows the Chicago-based quartet (Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore) upholding its commitment to new music with six pieces that are all recent commissions and world premiere recordings. It's been a strong year for the group: in addition to this fine addition to its discography, TCP issued in early 2025 a stellar treatment of Philip Glass's Aguas da Amazonia. Whereas that release appears on Rockwell Records, Standard Stoppages is the ensemble's seventh on Cedille Records. Testifying to the group's range, its first Cedille release, Steve Reich (2016), focused on the work of another seminal contemporary figure, while Paddle to the Sea (2018) drew for inspiration from the beloved 1966 film of the same name. The Reich release brought TCP a Grammy (for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance), and all four of its pre-Standard Stoppages Cedille recordings were nominated for awards…
BBC Music Magazine: Standard Stoppages Review
, by Anne Templer
One of the most exciting things about contemporary ensembles and their choice of composers are the more powerfully open-minded explorations of sound drawn from a breadth of traditions, where the attitude conveyed is one of celebratory curiosity. Third Coast Percussion is a group which had their celebration on their mind in this — their 20th-anniversary year — and on this album work with some of their favourite collaborators. The lengthy and close connection with these composers meant some of the more specialist techniques for a percussion ensemble were enthusiastically explored — such as pitch bending crotales through dipping in water, variation in timbre through multiple stick and brush changes, innovative, resourceful thinking and tremendous mastery of dynamics. Techniques from this group emanate the kind of synchronicity that only long term musical friendships can produce. They are able therefore to tackle Tigran Hamasyan's '23 for TCP' from his Sonata for Percussion…
The Daily Gazette: Albany Symphony’s American Music Festival to feature new pieces
June 5, 2025, by Geraldine Freedman
Adventurous listening awaits for all those who attend the Albany Symphony Orchestra’s annual American Music Festival, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sunday, June 8, in various locations in Albany and Troy. “[These are] fresh, out-of-the-box pieces that you can’t get anywhere else,” said ASO music director David Alan Miller. “It is classical music, but that world has broadened so much that the term classical music is not relevant. Even what is an orchestra has broadened.” Miller points to the opening concert at 5 p.m. at Albany’s Jennings Landing that will feature the debut of Chicago’s Grammy Award-winning percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion in a solo performance. Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore will be bringing, among other instruments, a marimba; a collection of drums such as tom-tom and bongo; gongs from Thailand; and “home” instruments such as metal bowls. “It will be about an hour with…
AllMusic: Standard Stoppages Review
, by James Manheim
The 2025 release Standard Stoppages marked the 20th anniversary of the Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion. As a result, it contains quite a mix of material, from that provided by the group's longtime collaborators to pieces from composers outside its usual orbit. The mixed-bag effect common on anniversary releases can be a negative, but here, it works to showcase the range of influences that appear in the group's work. The members reached out to various figures with whom they hadn't collaborated in the past as a way of marking the occasion. One of those was the Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain, who died during the album's production, and fans of his music may well want to hear the album for his two-movement Murmurs in Time alone. The work is an interesting fusion of Hussain's usual procedures with classical composition, but equally noteworthy are the pieces Third Coast Percussion has arranged from…
Classical Voice North America: Percussion Recording Becomes Memorial For Featured Tabla Master
May 26, 2025, by Richard Ginell
DIGITAL REVIEW — For its 20th anniversary album, Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion quartet thought they would deal with differing conceptions of time itself: the ground on which percussionists stake their place in the scheme of things. They had assembled an international trio of composers whom they had always wanted to work with — Armenia’s Tigran Hamasyan, Chicago’s Jessie Montgomery, India’s Zakir Hussain — plus two more (Jlin from nearby Gary, Ind., and Zimbabwe’s Musekiwa Chingodza) with whom they had worked before. They even got Hussain, who had never written a piece for a classical percussion ensemble until now, to perform on their disc. But the celebration sadly turned into a memorial: Hussain, the heir to his father Alla Rakha as the world’s most noted tabla virtuoso, died in December 2024, just two months after his recording sessions with the group. In any case, his piece, Murmurs in Time, occupies the central place in this highly listenable collection of world premieres. Divided into two halves lasting…
Cultural Attaché: David Skidmore: Pushing Third Coast Percussion Even Further
May 16, 2025, by Craig Byrd
This year marks the 20th Anniversary of Third Coast Percussion. They are celebrating by continuing to do what they have always done: look forward, take on challenging collaborations and recording new music. Just as David Skidmore hoped they would be able to do. Skidmore is a founding member of Third Coast Percussion and serves as the ensemble’s Executive Director. The other members are Sean Collins, Robert Dillon and Peter Martin. Their latest album, Standard Stoppages, was released on April 11th. The composers who wrote new works for them for the album are Musekiwa Chingodza, Jlin, Tigran Hamasyan, Jessie Montgomery and the late Zakir Hussain. They recently completed a tour with Twyla Tharp Dance performing the music of Philip Glass. And on June 28th, they have an all-day celebration in Chicago (their home base) called Rhythm Fest. That gave Skidmore and me a lot to talk about. And a lot that couldn’t be included in this…
The Oberlin Review: Third Coast Percussion Visits Oberlin for Workshops, Artist Recital Series
May 5, 2025, by Kash Radocha
This week, Grammy Award- winning percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion visited Oberlin for a series of workshops, culminating in the final Artist Recital Series concert of the year April 30. One of the few touring percussion quartets in the country, the Chicago-based group is celebrating its 20th anniversary during its 2024–2025 season and is visiting Oberlin as an ensemble for the first time. The four members, David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors, met during their undergraduate studies at Northwestern University and officially founded the ensemble in 2005. Third Coast Percussion has since established itself as one of the leading ensembles in the percussion world and have commissioned projects from the likes of Philip Glass, Zakir Hussain, Danny Elfman, and other accomplished musicians and composers. Additionally, each of the members have composed their own works, some of which have been nominated for Grammy awards. “We had a really…
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