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.
Third Coast Percussion Contributes to UChicago Presents: Gyorgy Ligeti Series
January 25, 2018, by Third Coast Percussion
January 22, 2018 by Andrew Bauld Over the next several months, University of Chicago Presents will celebrate the life and works of celebrated 20th-century classical composer, György Ligeti, through a series of musical events and lectures. Amy Iwano, executive director of University of Chicago Presents, has long hoped to organize a performance around Ligeti, who is considered one of the most influential avant-garde composers of the last century. Her intent was to create a celebration both of his music and scholarship. “We are very lucky in Chicago to have fantastic artists and ensembles who create really interesting programming, and in these concerts, we see Ligeti’s legacy—his impact on a younger generation of artists and how his music is evolving in their hands,” Iwano said. Iwano worked closely with Music Department musicologists Seth Brodsky and Jennifer Iverson and composers Anthony Cheung and Sam Pluta, along with musical groups Third Coast Percussion…
Third Coast Percussion’s Kaleidoscopic Album The Book of Keyboards
January 19, 2018, by Third Coast Percussion
January 18, 2018 by Stephanie Ann Boyd The CD case of Third Coast Percussion’s new album on New Focus Recordings of music by Philippe Manoury, The Book of Keyboards, is just as intricate and fascinating as the music itself inside. The thick paper cover opens up like a puzzle, with different fonts and graphic designs revealed with each unfolded layer. This is the work of Sonnenzimmer, a Chicago based art studio run by Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi, and is the first clue as to the care and attention Third Coast Percussion has taken in all aspects of this aural “book.” Both the six movement Le Livre des Claviers (The Book of Keyboards) and the final piece on the CD, Métal, take the listener on a journey into a world that is alternatingly chaotic—filled with kinesthetic energy and bursting with a kaleidoscope of metallic color—and meditative; melodically brooding around compositional concepts. Third Coast Percussion’s abilities as…
Rehearsal Magazine “In Conversation” with David Skidmore
March 6, 2018, by Third Coast Percussion
Rehearsal Magazine's Madi Chwasta caught up with ensemble member and Executive Director David Skidmore to talk collaborations, commissioning, and creating iPhone apps. Read part of this insightful interview below, or click here for the full piece. In a short period of time, Third Coast Percussion established themselves as one of the world’s leading percussion ensembles. What inspired the creation of the group and could you have predicted the ensemble's success from the beginning? We studied this music in school with an amazing teacher, Michael Burritt, who is now a professor of percussion at the Eastman School of Music. We loved the music so much that we decided to try to make a living doing it. I don't think we really knew when we got started exactly what it takes to build something like this from the ground up, so I definitely don't think we could have ever predicted where we would be…
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…
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