Within classical music, many like to pretend that a performer’s role — whether presenting a classic work, commission, or arrangement — is to access something static and predetermined about the composer’s intent.  The reality: Through the act of performance, musicians give unique embodiment to a score, imbuing it with singular and experientially specific emotional resonance. In this way, performers are collaborative producers in every work, be it a staple of the canon or a world premiere. Few ensembles lay out this case in clearer terms than Third Coast Percussion did in its Friday night program at the Nimoy Theater for UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. The ensemble’s interpretive powers expanded the emotional architecture of commissions from Gemma Peacocke and Danny Elfman. And across arrangements of music by Philip Glass and Clarice Assad and a collaborative realization of composer Jlin’s electronic scores, Third Coast’s distinctive footprint came into even clearer focus. Peacocke’s Death…

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Third Coast Percussion gave another wonderful performance at DePaul’s Gannon Auditorium on Friday night. The program included several works that have appeared on recent TCP releases. Highlights, however, were provided by composer/violinist Jessie Montgomery, the Mead Composer-In-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Montgomery ended the concert with a performance of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra. To pull that off, TCP members Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore were joined by a fifth percussionist, She-e Wu, who is the Director of the Percussion Program at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. TCP performances are fun to watch. Upon entering the hall, the audience is confronted by a stage full of noise-making devices. Center stage on Friday were the keyboard instruments vibraphone, marimba, and glockenspiel arranged to face each other. Nearby were drums, bass drums, pipes, whistles, mallets, violin bows, and many other objects. Stage right had single…

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Third Coast Percussion performed three songs for students and participated in a panel discussion Thursday night at Wheeling Park High School as they prepared for a performance with the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra at 7:30 p.m. tonight. During the concert, retiring WPHS strings instructor Benjamin Podolski will be presented with the WSO’s inaugural “Music Educator Award” – an honor given “in recognition of an educator that exemplifies extraordinary dedication to music education so that students are inspired and empowered through music performance.” Students from both WPHS and John Marshall High School attended Thursday night’s panel discussion. Asking questions and adding comments were WSO Music Director John Devlin and WPHS band director Jason Birch. Third Coast Percussion members Rob Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore and Sean Connor discussed how they discovered percussion as friends in middle school, then went on to pursue music education degrees at Northwestern University near Chicago where they…

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Between Breaths, the latest album from Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion, features five world premieres linked by the idea of meditation. Missy Mazzoli’s five-movement Millennium Canticles imagines a community attempting to recreate the rituals of human life after some kind of catastrophe. The eclectic palate includes wooden planks, drums, metal pipes, and chimes, plus vocal sounds suggesting shock, rage, and hope. “Famous Disaster Psalm,” for example, involves sharp intakes of breath over muted xylophone, while the snippy percussion in “Bloodied Bells” punctuates a soundscape of reverberating chimes. “Choir of the Holy Locusts” mixes insect-like buzzing with bursts of chant, and “Survival Psalm” channels Kathak drumming with its plosive vocalizations. Tyondai Braxton’s feelgood Sunny X adds electronics to an array of gongs, woodblocks, metal pipes, and plates for a fast ride in a minimalist-inspired machine. Hypnotic patterns built from tiny unpitched phrases combine with funky electronic washes in a work that oozes…

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Third Coast Percussion commemorated a 400-year anniversary with the help of composer and percussionist Michael J. Burritt, who was their professor 20 years ago at Northwestern University. Burritt, who has since moved on, received a commission from the Avedis Zildjian Cymbal Company to write a 30-minute work for percussion quartet to celebrate that company’s 400th anniversary. The result was Since Time Began¸ a four-movement work that TCP performed on Tuesday night at Gannon Auditorium on the campus of DePaul University. As typically happens at a Third Coast Percussion performance, confronting the audience was a stage full of noisemaking stuff. On Tuesday there were three drum kits, various other drums and cymbals, pipes, crotales, a glass bowl half-filled with water, marimbas, vibraphones, a glockenspiel, and drumsticks and mallets of every description. TCP performances require movement between the instruments; the equipment is carefully placed and the choreography is worked out in advance. The…

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