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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.
Best classical albums of 2019: World premieres, historic revivals and enticingly eclectic music
January 2, 2020, by Howard Reich
"Surely anyone who attended last year's world premiere of Philip Glass' "Perpetulum," commissioned and performed by Third Coast Percussion, felt the joy and rhythmic exuberance of this music."
From Third Coast, Percussion Aplenty With Glass In Mix
October 28, 2019, by Richard S. Ginell
The Glass piece is called Perpetulum, and it operates unlike any other Glass piece that I can think of. Cast in four continuous sections, it opens not with typical Glass patterns and arpeggios, but with a series of percussion grooves closer in feel to Varèse’s Ionisation than anything by this composer. Two of the succeeding sections are signaled by slow majestic rolls of the tam-tam, another is labeled as a “cadenza” that contain fresh arpeggios that don’t seem to be reprocessed from Glass’ database. The last part starts as a Latinized workout that eventually settles into the most conventional (relatively speaking) Glass progression of the piece. While Glass has been so prolific that it’s hard to keep up to date with everything he has done lately, this is easily one of the most enjoyable, inventive, and least recycled things he’s done in the last decade at least. "Percussion fans and…
Another compelling version of Dev Hynes
October 22, 2019, by Diana Yassin
The alias Blood Orange is etched in Dev Hynes’s discography. He does embrace other noms de plume, though, and assigns each to a signature style. But “Lightspeed Champion,” the spacy, genre-defying brand that carved a delicate niche in the R&B and soul game, never gained the traction that Blood Orange has. The latter’s dreamy, sometimes melancholic synth-pop has given Hynes the recognition he deserves from artists Empress Of, Carly Rae Jepsen and A$AP Rocky. And since the release of Negro Swan last fall, Hynes has been on a creative streak, releasing EP Angel’s Pulse this summer and Fields last Friday. "a stunning mashup between forces" Fields is a significant departure from any work previously released. A classical music album, it’s published under Hynes’s official name alongside Third Coast Percussion. Hynes composed all the music in a digital audio workstation and sent the recordings and sheet music to the members of Third Coast Percussion to arrange and orchestrate…
Blood Orange & Third Coast Percussion – ‘Fields’ review: luxurious ambient sounds
October 10, 2019, by Carl Anka
No genre has proven too obscure for the Ilford-born musician, and if his name is found in an album’s liner notes, there’s sure to be music of category-defying quality inside. Which makes this new release from the Grammy Award-winning, Chicago-based percussion quartet group Third Coast Percussion – for which Dev Hynes composed all the music – so intriguing. "Alt-pop polymath Dev Hynes has teamed up with Third Coast Percussion to create a beguiling record." “We’ve always felt that the future of classical music depends on deepening the collaborative process and removing the strict barriers between composers and performers,” Third Coast Percussion have written in the liner notes to the album, and while Hynes’ influences can be felt on ‘Fields’, this is an album best listened to on its own merits "There's an element of tidal fury to Fields..." Comprised of 13 compositions, the first 11 of which form a suite called…
Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion new ensemble-in-residence
October 17, 2019, by Third Coast Percussion
Third Coast Percussion will be in residence for several days in December and February. The group already is scheduled to take part in music, psychology, and studio art classes. They also will perform at Denison during Granville’s annual candlelight walking tour. “We are excited to have Third Coast Percussion join us on stages and in classrooms across the campus,” says Michael Morris, director of the Michael D. Eisner Center for the Performing Arts, and the Vail Series. “Our students and faculty have a history of really connecting with our ensembles-in-residence. We’ve seen great exchanges through these relationships and we’re thrilled to be able to expand the program to include this talented group of people in the Denison circle.” David Skidmore of Third Coast Percussion says, “We are so excited to have the opportunity to work closely with the bright and gifted students at Denison University. We were able to visit…
Out of the comfort zone: Danny Elfman has world premiere at Philip Glass Festival
October 11, 2019, by John Malkin
Danny Elfman says his success as a musician and composer is due to continually stepping out of his comfort zone. After success with the ’80s new-wave band Oingo Boingo, Elfman broke into composing film soundtracks with “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” in 1985. His credits now include more than 100 Hollywood movie scores including “Edward Scissorhands” and “The Circle.” He also wrote the theme music for TV’s “The Simpsons.” Now Elfman is taking another musical leap into composing symphonic concert music. The Elfman Percussion Quartet will have its world premiere at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, as part of the Days and Nights Festival. Philip Glass founded the festival in 2011 and his own composition Perpetulum will also be performed by Grammy-award winning Third Coast Percussion Ensemble. The evening will begin with a Q&A session with Elfman and Glass. The Days and Nights Festival runs through Sunday,…
Haas premiere highlights Third Coast Percussion’s UC concert
October 14, 2019, by Third Coast Percussion
The concert was the second in UChicago Presents’ opening weekend, and a production of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition (CCCC), a “dynamic, collaborative, interdisciplinary environment” founded at U of C last year by composer and teacher Augusta Read Thomas, with an advisory board that includes Brodsky. In his prefatory comments, Brodsky drew attention to the reality that new music is a perennially hard sell, and not necessarily just at the box office. He went on to comment appreciatively on the ample audience assembled at Logan for that night’s performance: “All future concerts will be Third Coast,” he joked. "The ensemble offered the type of consistently thoughtful, dynamic performances that have earned them their reputation." Having a Grammy-winning local headliner like Third Coast Percussion (TCP) can certainly help fill the seats for new music. The quartet of young men has become one of the most prominent such ensembles and has…
Third Coast Percussion premiers Danny Elfman piece at Days and Night Festival
October 11, 2019, by Jesse Herwitz
These days, stage fright is not a problem for Chicago-based ensemble Third Coast Percussion. With a busy touring schedule and rapid album releases – four in the last two years – one might wonder how the quartet keeps their nerves calm. They premiered Philip Glass’ “Perpetulum” in front of Philip Glass at 2018’s Chicago Humanities Festival. Now they are performing the world premiere of Danny Elfman’s “Percussion Quartet” in front of Danny Elfman at this year’s Days and Nights Festival. That could wear on anyone. “We perform a lot,” says ensemble member Robert Dillon. “Concert nerves translate themselves primarily as a level of excitement and energy on stage.” That stage comfort might also have something to do with winning a Grammy Award – the first ever given to a percussion ensemble – for their 2016 album featuring music written by pioneering minimalist composer Steve Reich. “Winning that award felt like…
Devonté Hynes and Third Coast Percussion: Fields review – a crystal-clear connection
October 8, 2019, by Siobhán Kane
"There is a heady telepathy among the quartet, who approach the compositions with grace, clarity and dexterity..." So a collaboration with Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion seems fitting – the quartet of David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and Sean Connors are similarly synonymous with a progressive ethos, slipping the shackles of their form. Hynes and the quartet have another connection, in Philip Glass. Third Coast have commissioned and performed works by him, and Hynes has performed with him, and elements of Glass’s work – and, at times, his contemporary Steve Reich – weave around this record. "Fields is impressive." Fields is impressive. The first 11 tracks are a suite, For All Its Fury, followed by two longer pieces, Perfectly Voiceless and There Was Nothing. All were composed by Hynes; recordings and sheet music were sent to Third Coast, who arranged and orchestrated them for their instruments, and a dialogue between composer…
Mallets and sticks: Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion
September 30, 2019, by Mark Tiarks
Out of this environment came Third Coast Percussion, four young players who were all students at Northwestern University in 2005. Their first gigs had been educational concerts in Chicago’s public schools and city colleges, but they soon branched out with public performances on their own, many in small neighborhood bars and nightclubs. Now Third Coast is one of the hottest classical music groups in the world, hailed as “commandingly elegant” by The New York Times and “absolute masters of the art,” by BBC Music Magazine... The quartet of Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore makes its Santa Fe debut on Tuesday, Oct. 1, under the auspices of Performance Santa Fe. Their program includes music by Philip Glass (Perpetulum, a co-commission by PSF and Third Coast), Augusta Read Thomas, Mark Applebaum, and Devonté Hynes (better known to you contemporary R&B fans as Blood Orange), along with four of their own compositions.…
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