Tasting Notes at Wasserman Projects

Friday, June 13 | 7 PM

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20 Years of Impact and Resonance

Since 2005, Third Coast Percussion has forged a unique path in the musical landscape with virtuosic, energetic performances that celebrate the extraordinary depth and breadth of musical possibilities in the world of percussion. This performance marks the passing of time, both in the diverse approaches to rhythm revealed in each work, and in celebrating the 20-year history of championing this music. The program features works that highlight some important moments of this journey, points to different facets of the organization’s work, and shares exciting new pieces commissioned to celebrate this landmark occasion.

Playbook was created by composer and educator Danny Clay as part of Third Coast Percussion’s Currents Creative Partnership, an education and mentorship program that provides an opportunity to compose for TCP through a highly collaborative process, for music creators who are early in their careers or are exploring a new artistic direction. Playbook was inspired by musical games that Clay uses with students of different ages, and like all works in the Currents Creative Partnership, was composed through multiple workshops with TCP during the compositional process. Three years later, Danny Clay worked with TCP again to develop a massive education and community performance piece entitled The Bell Ringers. (“Teeth” duration: 6 minutes)

“Niagara” from Paddle to the Sea was one of the pieces Third Coast Percussion performed as part of its NPR Tiny Desk Concert in 2018, a bucket-list performance for any musician. It is a small excerpt of a larger project, Paddle to the Sea, whichwas one of Third Coast Percussion’s first collaboratively composed works, written together by the four members of the quartet. While pieces written by ensemble members have always been a special part of the TCPs repertoire, co-composing as a group only began about 10 years into the ensemble’s history. Third Coast’s multi-media program Paddle to the Sea, based on the children’s film and book of the same name, was the quartet’s first touring project to feature a collaboratively composed work, and was a staple of the ensemble’s repertoire for years. The film tells the story of a small wooden figure in a canoe, that makes a long journey from the Great Lakes out to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. Paddle also encounters danger in his journey, as in this passage, when he goes over Niagara Falls. (duration: 3 minutes)

The album of TCP’s Archetypes project with Clarice and Sérgio Assad earned the quartet its first GRAMMY nomination as composers (Best Contemporary Classical Composition), and one of its six nominations as performers to date (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance). The twelve movements of this suite are each inspired by a universal character concept that appears in stories and myths across cultures, such as the jester, the ruler, the creator, or the caregiver. Each of the performers chose certain archetypes that sparked their imaginations, with Clarice and Sérgio each composing four of the movements, and each member of Third Coast Percussion composing one. With Clarice’s blessing, TCP arranged her composition “The Hero” from this project for percussion quartet alone, as an additional opportunity to share this bold music with audiences. It has now become a common repertoire piece for percussion ensembles at universities and conservatories. (duration: 4 minutes)

Jlin’s seven-moment work for TCP, Perspective, was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. This musicalso featured prominently in the “Metamorphosis” touring program with Movement Art Is, which TCP brought to Carnegie Hall, as well as other TCP projects, and was recorded on another GRAMMY-nominated album, Perspectives, alongside Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis No. 1 and works by Danny Elfman and Flutronix.The collaborative process for creating Perspective marked an important development in TCP’s work commissioning music from creators of many different genres; after exploring and sampling instruments from TCP’s vast collection of percussion sounds at their studio in Chicago, Jlin created an electronic audio version of each of the work’s seven movements using these samples and other sounds from her own library. The members of Third Coast Percussion then set about notating this music and determining how to realize these pieces in live performance. Jlin named her piece Perspective as a reference to this unique collaborative process: “When I give an ensemble a piece, I don’t want to hear them play it back exactly as I wrote it. I want to hear it from another perspective.” (“Obscure”duration: 5 minutes)

Metamorphosis No. 1 is one of many works by iconic composer Philip Glass that TCP has arranged over the years. This particular piece was part of an important TCP project, “Metamorphosis,” which was a collaboration with Movement Art Is (choreographers Lil Buck and Jon Boogz) and which TCP performed at its Carnegie Hall debut in 2023. TCP’s performance of Metamorphosis No. 1 was also featured as part of “Philip Glass: Three Cities,” a video performance series celebrating Glass’s 85^th birthday in 2022. As part of the ensemble’s ongoing relationship with the influential composer, Third Coast Percussion also commissioned Glass’s first work for percussion ensemble, Perpetulum, in 2018. (duration: 10 minutes)

To celebrate Third Coast Percussion’s 20^th Anniversary, the quartet is undertaking collaborations with some of its musical heroes as well as favorite partners from past projects, including three works on this program:

TCP approached Jlin to compose another work for the occasion, this time adding another layer to the musical chain, by asking her to create a new work that would be a remix or reworking of music by another composer that inspires her. Please Be Stillreimagines materials from “Kyrie Elieson” from J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor. A lover of Bach’s music since childhood, Jlin focused in on Bach’s rhythmic vocabulary. The creative process with TCP was an extension of the collaboration that yielded Perspective. (duration: 6 minutes)

Third Coast Percussion built an artistic kinship with composer Jessie Montgomery during her time as Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, arranging some of her existing music and serving as a sort of “percussion laboratory” as she composed her first percussion ensemble piece, Study No. 1. Her new work, commissioned for TCP’s 20^th Anniversary, Lady Justice/Black Justice, The Song expands the techniques she developed in Study No. 1, particularly methods of pitch-bending metal and drum sounds. This new work is inspired by the artwork of Ori G. Carino and his painting “Black Justice” (2020-2022), which is a rendering of a Romanesque statue of the symbolic sword- and scale-bearing figure of Lady Justice, depicted as a Black woman. The image is airbrushed upon several layers of silk, stretched in staggered alignment across a life-sized canvas to create a holographic effect that reveals the figure’s timelessness and multiple hues. The image is staggering, aspirational, and technically virtuosic. CLICK HERE to view an image of the painting. (duration: 12 minutes)

Pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan has long been a musician that the members of Third Coast Percussion have admired and appreciated. While he has built a career as a performer of his own music — known to his fans as a sort of prog rock version of the modern jazz musician — his work seems a natural choice for composing for a contemporary percussion ensemble. Within an extremely complex rhythmic landscape exists compelling counterpoint, and expressive melodic lines that transcend the mathematics of their complex metric skeletons. His Sonata for Percussionis very classical in some ways, with three distinct movements that echo the classical sonata (fast-slow-fast), lilting dance feels, arpeggiated harmonies, and ornamented melodies. Hamasyan’s distinct voice is present throughout, with the moments of hard-grooving energy or ghostly lyricism winding their way through an asymmetrical rhythmic jigsaw puzzle. The outer movements both explore different subdivisions of 23-beat rhythmic cycles, while the middle movement is in a (relatively) tame seven. (duration: 22 minutes)

Please Be Still was commissioned by Third Coast Percussion for its 20th Anniversary, with support by Carnegie Hall, the Zell Family Foundation, and the Robert and Isabelle Bass Foundation.

Lady Justice/Black Justice, The Song was commissioned by Third Coast Percussion for its 20^th Anniversary, with support from the Zell Family Foundation, Carnegie Hall, Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa, Stanford Live, Stanford University, The Robert and Isabelle Bass Foundation, and Third Coast Percussion’s New Works Fund.

Tigran Hamasyan’s Sonata for Percussion was commissioned by Third Coast Percussion for its 20th Anniversary, with support from Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting and the Zell Family Foundation.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS

As a composer, his recent collaborators include Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and his work has been performed by the Cincinnati and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras, International Contemporary Ensemble, and more. He has taught at Stanford University, the Crowden Music Center, and the after-school program Little Opera, and has developed educational programming for Kronos Quartet, Kennedy Center Education, Trade Winds Ensemble, and others. His current interests lie in creating arts integration lesson plans and designing HTML-based web interactives that facilitate creative exploration and discovery.

An in-demand performer, she is a celebrated pianist and inventive vocalist who inspires and encourages audiences’ imaginations to break free of often self-imposed constraints. Assad has released seven solo albums and appeared on or had her works performed on another 34. Her music is represented on Cedille Records, SONY Masterworks, Nonesuch, Adventure Music, Edge, Telarc, NSS Music, GHA, and CHANDOS. Her innovative, accessible, and award-winning VOXploration series on music education, creation, songwriting, and improvisation has been presented throughout the world. Sought-after by artists and organizations worldwide, the multi-talented musician continues to attract new audiences both onstage and off.

He was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud, later moving to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and working closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. He has collaborated with Allen Ginsberg, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonard Cohen, and Doris Lessing, among many others.

Her much-lauded albums “Dark Energy” (2015) and “Black Origami” (2017) have appeared on “Best of” lists in The NY Times, The Wire, LA Times, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and Vogue. Jlin has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, the Pathos Quartet, choreographers Wayne McGregor and Kyle Abraham, fashion designer Rick Owens and the visual artists Nick Cave and Kevin Beasley. Her latest release “Akoma” (Planet Mu March 2024) features collaborations with Philip Glass, Björk and Kronos Quartet.

Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and former member of the Catalyst Quartet, she continues to maintain an active performance career as a violinist appearing regularly with her own ensembles, as well as with the Silkroad Ensemble and Sphinx Virtuosi.

Hamasyan found himself part of the festivities at the Yerevan Second International Jazz Festival in 2000 and, when he was 16, his family immigrated to Los Angeles. He stayed in high school for two months before gaining entrance to the University of Southern California, which he attended for two years. As a teen, he would go on just a few years later to win a number of contests including the 2003 Montreux Jazz Festival and the grand prize at the prestigious 2006 Thelonious Monk Jazz Piano Competition.