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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.
WFMT’s 10 Best Live Performances of 2017
January 14, 2018, by Third Coast Percussion
We were proud to share the WFMT stage with fellow Chicago Grammy nominees Spektral Quartet and the Lincoln Trio in October of last year. Thanks, WFMT, for including our concert in your Top 10 List of 2017! Hear our concert, and nine other great broadcast performances, here.
Book of Keyboards: Second Inversion’s Top 10 Albums of 2017
, by Third Coast Percussion
December 27, 2017 by Dacia Clay If classical music is a volcanic island, percussion ensembles are the lava and magma that makes the new land. They’re always on the edge, pushing out, making new sounds with new instruments. And that’s exactly what Third Coast Percussion is doing on Book of Keyboards. They’ve recorded two works by modernist composer Philippe Manoury—sometimes sounding like an elaborate wooden wind chime orchestra, and at other times leaving long, worshipful tensions between notes. Some of the instruments used on this album are familiar enough—like marimbas and vibraphones—but I’m gonna bet you’ve never heard the sixxen, because they were invented by a guy named Iannis Xenakis (also an avant-garde composer) and homemade by Third Coast. I wonder if performing on instruments that you’ve made by hand is as exciting/terrifying as flying a kit plane that you’ve built in your garage? Third Coast never lets on, moving…
CD Review – Third Coast Percussion in The Book of Keyboards
December 29, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
December 11, 2017 by Jarrett Hoffman With their latest album, The Book of Keyboards, Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion drops you into another world. The inhabitants: six bafflingly good players, one revelatory composer in Philippe Manoury, a family of four tuned percussion instruments, and you — and after hearing this music there’s no going back. In Le Livre des Claviers, which lends the recording its English title, Manoury stretches the definition of “keyboards” to include six low-pitched Thai gongs in the opening movement, along with marimbas. No time for introductions — the message from the two mallet instruments is all steady urgency. At the end the gongs spill out their deep, murky resonance, a portal to step inside. The composer alternates between short movements and long. The meatier “Marimba Duo” shows off his flexibility, from order to chaos and back in a flash. Influenced by Boulez, his vocabulary is complex and intense but…
CD Hotlist: The Book of Keyboards
December 4, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
December 4, 2017 by Rick Anderson French composer Philippe Manoury writes percussion music that is brutally demanding, in terms of both the technical requirements it places on the musicians, and the technical requirements for simply getting ready to play it. The six-movement title work (and the 22-minute Métal, which follows it on the program) require not only traditional percussion instruments like marimbas, vibraphones, and Thai gongs, but also the construction of a multipart instrument called the Sixxen. But although the music is hugely demanding of the performers, it’s quite accessible and enjoyable for the listener. The dense flurries of notes are impressive but also beautiful, and there are strong nods to familiar genres like gamelan and 20th-century minimalism in the mix. Strongly recommended to all libraries.
Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: November 2017
November 28, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
November 27, 2017 by Peter Margasak Chicago’s remarkable Third Coast Percussion spent several years working on this challenging work by French composer Philippe Manoury, a demanding piece for tuned percussion of rigorous post-Boulez complexity. It’s an interesting project for the group, who have proactively pushed the sounds of contemporary percussion music away from the academy toward a more mainstream listenership. But the music of Manoury—who often works in electro-acoustic contexts—is a long way from Steve Reich or Augusta Read Thomas. That the group is able to essay these difficult works with such deceptive ease and genuine clarity, giving The Book of Keyboards a glistening appeal, speaks to their technical mastery. Five of the six movements, as well as an epic complementary piece, “Métal,” are actually scored for a percussion sextet, and on those pieces the group is joined by Gregory Beyer of Ensemble Dal Niente and Ross Karre of International Contemporary Ensemble.…
Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra performs NU alumna’s piece featuring 300 bells
November 17, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
November 16, 2017 by Jane Recker The Harris Theater stage is 2,025 square feet. On Sunday afternoon, half of that space was taken up by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra. The remaining 1,012 square feet were claimed by the four members of Third Coast Percussion for their 300 assorted bells. The quartet — a Grammy Award-winning, Chicago-based group of Northwestern alumni — was there to perform the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ (Bienen ’87) “Sonorous Earth.” ... “Sonorous Earth” is a percussion quartet concerto in four movements. The opening three movements feature different families of bells ranging in size from 3-foot gongs to bells the size of a thumbnail. The first movement is energetic and fanfare-like; the second is an intimate prayer; and the third is playful and capricious, Thomas said. The composition ends with a “resonant and clangorous” climax in which musicians strike every single one of the 300…
“Sonorous Earth” makes a heavenly noise with Third Coast Percussion, Chicago Philharmonic
November 14, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
November 14, 2017 by Wynne Delacoma "...the connection between the orchestra and Third Coast Percussion was seamlessly organic." Sunday afternoon at the Harris Theater the Chicago Philharmonic partnered with the virtuoso Third Coast Percussion ensemble for the world premiere of Sonorous Earth by Augusta Read Thomas, a former CSO composer-in-residence. A reworking of a chamber piece she wrote a few years ago for the four-member percussion ensemble, it offers bells on steroids. Filled with racks hung with a dizzying array of bells and gongs, the stage looked like the display floor of a musical instrument store. During most of the 30-minute, four-movement piece, Third Coast percussionists—David Skidmore, Sean Connors, Robert Dillon and Peter Martin—played in front of both the orchestra and conductor Scott Speck. It was obvious, however, that the quartet had absorbed this piece into its very bones. Thanks, perhaps, to mental telepathy, the quartet and orchestra operated as…
A symphony of 300 bells at the Chicago Philharmonic
November 13, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
November 13, 2017 by John von Rhein In separate concerts over the weekend, two similarly named groups, Third Coast Percussion and Third Coast Baroque, reminded audiences of the increasingly vital roles new classical music and early music play in the performing arts life of Chicago. The quartet of virtuoso percussion players calling themselves Third Coast Percussion has worked on several projects with Chicago composer Augusta Read Thomas. None are more ambitious, more grandly scaled or more rewarding to everybody than her “Sonorous Earth,” a quasi-concerto for more than 300 bells (and other resonant pieces of metal) and symphony orchestra. The four-movement work had its world premiere by the Chicago Philharmonic on Sunday afternoon at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Although “Sonorous Earth” draws some of its musical materials and its movement titles from “Resounding Earth” (a 2012 piece for solo percussion Thomas wrote for the Third Coast group),…
Grammy-Winning Third Coast Percussion Preparing For Ambitious World Premiere
November 8, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
November 6, 2017 WDCB's Gary Zidek visited our studio as we prepare our world premiere concerto that explores the layers of bell sounds. Gary even got a "Bells 101" crash course as he explored the instruments we play in Augusta Read Thomas's Sonorous Earth. He interviewed David and Sean about the concerto, its growth from a previous collaboration with Thomas, and the universality of the bell sounds that make up the work. Hear the full interview and explore his photo gallery in "The Arts Section." "It's taking a piece that we love [Thomas's Resounding Earth] and have played so many times, and reimagining it with one of Augusta's favorite mediums to write for: the full symphony orchestra. It's the best of both worlds in that way." -David Skidmore We will premiere the concerto with the Chicago Philharmonic on Sunday, November 12, at 3:00pm in Chicago's Harris Theater.
Seaworthy Beats
October 25, 2017, by Third Coast Percussion
October 21, 2017 by Gregory Sullivan Isaacs The Nasher Sculpture Center's Soundings season opens with Third Coast Percussion and an original score for the film Paddle to the Sea. Soundings: New Music at the Nasher is an always-intriguing series at the Nasher Sculpture Center that features the music of our time. On Wednesday, the curators outdid themselves by presenting an ensemble called Third Coast Percussion that performed a live soundtrack to a 1966 Oscar-nominated movie, Paddle to the Sea. It is based on a well-known Canadian children’s book (1941) with the same title by Holling Clancy Holling. The book is in short chapters, designed to be a series of bedtime stories. The film adds an environmental message. The 28-minute movie is available on YouTube here. It was heavily edited and expanded for the performance, extending to 65 minutes. The story concerns a Native Canadian boy who carves a miniature canoe with a seated Native Canadian…
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