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 expands percussion’s meaning
January 28, 2016, by Third Coast Percussion
January 28, 2016 by Jackie Walton The four musicians who comprise Third Coast Percussion have repeatedly taken on fearsome repertoire over the years. The ensemble specializes in material that's out of reach to most percussion groups. The quartet will tackle yet another series of demanding challenges in a pairing of works by Donnacha Dennehy and Steve Reich on Saturday at the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, where the quartet has been the ensemble-in-residence since 2013. Both compositions require the performers to handle a heavy workload, sometimes involving highly unusual extended techniques. The concert begins with the world premiere of Dennehy's "Surface Tension." It was co-commissioned by DeBartolo and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Third Coast will repeat this program at the Met in New York City in February. "Surface Tension" features a phenomenon rarely heard in percussion music: melodies. (more…)
The Best Things To Do In Chicago This Month: Classical, New Music, Opera
January 26, 2016, by Third Coast Percussion
January 28, 2016 By Graham Meyer and Matt Pollock UCHICAGO PRESENTS 2/5 AT 7:30 Third Coast Percussion bangs out a crowd-pleasing program that includes Thierry De Mey’s rhythmic Table Music, the Chicago premiere of Donnacha Dennehy’s drumming piece Surface Tension, and the minimalist master Steve Reich’s Sextet. $5–$25. International House, U. of C., 1414 E. 59th. (more…)
REICH: Works for Percussion
January 28, 2016, by Third Coast Percussion
January 27, 2016 by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim By the time the members of this impressive percussion ensemble joined forces in 2005, the composer Steve Reich was already a grandfather figure in the American new-music scene. So as the percussionist Robert Dillon writes in the liner notes to this beguiling CD, his group’s responsibility is 'not to document this repertoire — it no longer needs basic preservation — but rather, to put our own stamp on it.' It’s above all a sensual approach to tone color that comes through in Third Coast’s take on classic works, whether it’s the relaxed warmth of the Mallet Quartet or the glistening brightness of 'Music for Pieces of Wood.' Joined by the pianists David Friend and Oliver Hagen, the ensemble also finds full-blooded drama in the Sextet, which contains within its five movements a world of expressions from impish charm to almost oppressive darkness.…
Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche’s extravagant ‘Wild Sound’ a spectacle at the MCA
June 7, 2015, by Third Coast Percussion
May 22, 2015 by Alan G. Artner As each ticket was torn to give entry to Thursday night's concert at the Museum of Contemporary Art, each bearer received what looked like miniature chopsticks joined at a serrated center. These sticks would be called into play midway through Glenn Kotche's "Wild Sound," an extravagant, 43-minute long audio-video piece performed by the four virtuosi of Third Coast Percussion. The immediately engaging piece developed from a collaboration not only between composer, performers and the video artist Xuan but also stage director Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, lighting designer Sarah Prince and audio engineer Dan Nichols. What resulted was a choreographed spectacle that twice enlisted brief audience participation to refresh and illustrate John Cage's principle of all sound being ultimately music. (more…)
Wilco Drummer Glenn Kotche Brings “Wild Sounds” to Classical Audiences
May 19, 2015, by Third Coast Percussion
May 19, 2015 “Can this happen? Can we do it? Can the musicians actually construct instruments onstage and make music that I actually want to listen to? Can we transcend gimmick and theatricality and have actual musical merit? How is this going to happen?” These are the questions that Glenn Kotche began to ask when devising his latest work, Wild Sounds, with Third Coast Percussion and the College of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. The work comes to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago for two performances on May 21 and 22, 2015. (more…)
Review: Augusta Read Thomas’s Spiritual ‘Resounding Earth’
March 16, 2015, by Third Coast Percussion
March 6, 2015 by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim Budding composers are well advised to write for standard instrumentation: The simpler and more common the forces required, the higher the chances of a piece getting performances beyond the premiere. But Augusta Read Thomas, the subject of a Composer Portraits series at Columbia University’s Miller Theater on Thursday and the recipient of numerous prizes and orchestral commissions, is no longer a novice. In fact, according to statistics released last year by ASCAP, a performing rights organization, she topped their list of most frequently performed living composers in 2013-14. She has permission, then, if any were needed, to think big. “Resounding Earth,” a 30-minute work for percussion quartet that received its New York premiere at Miller this week by the commandingly elegant Third Coast Percussion, calls for a battery of some 300 metal instruments, including tiny cymbal-like crotales, giant gongs, Burmese temple bells and metal coils. The work was developed in close…
American Music Festival wraps up with a bang from percussion ensemble
March 23, 2015, by Third Coast Percussion
March 23, 2015 by Stephen Brooks The National Gallery of Art’s two-week American Music Festival — one of the most adventurous and exciting celebrations of contemporary music here in years — closed Sunday with a performance by the Third Coast Percussion ensemble that proved just how vital and fertile new American music really is. Playing on items as varied as Tibetan singing bowls and amplified Magic Markers, the ensemble transformed the museum’s West Garden Court into a vast, resonating sonic playground, presenting four recent works that ran from mischievous humor to bluesy sensuality — delivered with virtuosity and deft, precisely timed wit. (more…)
Percussionists close Stave Sessions
, by Third Coast Percussion
March 23, 2015 by Matthew Guerrieri Third Coast Percussion wasn’t originally scheduled to close out Celebrity Series of Boston’s Stave Sessions, but that they ended up doing so was fitting. The Sessions — six nights of concerts in Berklee’s glass-enclosed, club-like dining hall — marked a somewhat radical departure for Celebrity Series, venturing into the brave new(-ish) world of classical music in nontraditional venues with a sustained dose of contemporary music. Percussion music, for its part, is inherently radical, stripping music down to essentials: time, gesture, attack. The Chicago-based quartet — David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors, making their Boston debut — emphasized that quality with a concert of further distillations. (more…)
Third Coast Percussion taps, teases and tickles in Stave Sessions finale
March 22, 2015, by Third Coast Percussion
March 22, 2015 by David Wright Stave Sessions, the week-long mini-festival of cutting-edge musical presentations by Celebrity Series of Boston, ended with a bang Saturday night. And a whisper, and a murmur, and a caress. Anyone who thought an evening of music entirely for percussion instruments would sound like a pots-and-pans rack falling off the wall was in for a surprise, as the Chicago-based quartet of players called Third Coast Percussion led listeners through their mysterious, funny, endlessly inventive and often exhilarating musical specialty. (more…)
Scene It: Third Coast Percussion at Kilbourn Hall
March 25, 2015, by Third Coast Percussion
March 25, 2015 By Ron Netsky Five blocks of wood, four thick dowels, and a mallet. If that sounds like the ingredients for a woodworking project from your 8th-grade shop class, you were not at Kilbourn Hall Tuesday night with Third Coast Percussion. The four members of the group -- David Skidmore, Peter Martin, Robert Dillon, and Sean Conners -- were joined by Eastman Professor Michael Burritt for the most minimal of several minimalist pieces sprinkled throughout the concert. Burritt had mentored all of the group's members when he was teaching at Northwestern University and they were clearly delighted to be sharing the stage with him. (more…)
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