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.
Drum Roles — Two decades in, Third Coast Percussion continues to push its sound in new directions.
January 30, 2026, by Jessi Roti
It's admittedly "a little silly" for all four members of Third Coast Percussion to gather around a single marimba, says founding member David Skidmore. But that's exactly the scenario the chamber music quartet asked rising composer JaRon Brown to create with the new work This Too Shall Pass. Skidmore describes "dancing around each other" to perform it, which undoubtedly necessitates some functional choreography. He adds, "JaRon's music is really thoughtfully put together, with a sense of lightness, fun, and whimsy." (Third Coast once performed a piece by the South Carolina composer that's meant to mimic the feeling of having butterflies in your stomach.) This Too Shall Pass gets its world premiere February 25 as part of Third Coast's concert at Gottlieb Hall in the West Loop. Taking on a new challenge is very much in the DNA of the acclaimed group, which celebrated two decades together in 2025. Its anniversary…
Bruce Goff Wasn’t Just an Architect – He Also Composed, Music Third Coast Percussion Concert Performs at the Art Institute
January 23, 2026, by Daniel Hautzinger
“I think he was a genius,” Sean Connors says as his quartet Third Coast Percussion wraps up a rehearsal of music by Bruce Goff, which they will perform at the Art Institute of Chicago on January 29 in association with the exhibit “Bruce Goff: Material Worlds.” While visiting the exhibit, Connors had been struck by Goff’s artistic output in various mediums: abstract paintings; the music Third Coast is rehearsing; and, most famously, idiosyncratic homes and buildings that include unconventional materials such as coal, rope, cast-off glass chunks, and sequins in imaginatively shaped structures. “He’s like Leonardo,” Connors continues, Da Vinci being another artist who dove into disparate fields with a curious, restless mind. But by the twentieth century, when Goff worked, such a multi-talented “Renaissance man” had become far less common as fields – perhaps especially architecture and classical music – specialized. Nevertheless, Goff was an outlier, and not just in his…
Best classical and jazz of 2025: Our top 10 included a tasty concept at Ravinia, improv and a ‘moving’ performance at the CSO
December 11, 2025, by Hannah Edgar
The best-run festival I encountered this year was Rhythm Fest, a blowout birthday bash for Third Coast Percussion in June. It dispensed with travel-and-ticketing headaches by posting up for just a day at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, utilizing six different spaces on the campus. It surely would have only worked for the kind of music the quartet assembled — solo and small-ensemble acts from its wide roster of collaborators — but boy, did it work.
Viet Cuong’s energetic music in the spotlight at Northwestern
November 15, 2025, by Katherine Buzard
Northwestern University’s Symphonic Wind Ensemble teamed up with acclaimed Chicago-based ensembles Third Coast Percussion, Eighth Blackbird, and ~Nois Quartet for a program showcasing the work of Viet Cuong on Friday night. The concert, titled “Vital Currents: The Music of Viet Cuong,” kicked off a weekend recording project of the Vietnamese-American composer’s work. Third Coast Percussion joined the stage for Re(new)al, a piece Cuong describes in his program note as “celebrating everyone who is working together to create a cleaner, more efficient world.” The concerto for percussion quartet is constructed of three continuous movements, each inspired by different types of renewable energy: hydro, wind, and solar. Hydro power was manifested by a set of crystal glasses, which Third Coast Percussion clinked together to create different chords. As in John and Jim, Cuong built up the texture gradually, adding tinkling piano, blowing air, and fluttering piccolo scales on top of the glass sonorities. The second…
Classical Album Review: Third Coast Percussion Turns 20 — “Standard Stoppages”
, by Jonathan Blumhofer
“Surprise,” the Russian novelist Boris Pasternak once noted, “is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” Though the observation predates the formation of the quartet Third Coast Percussion by several decades, the sentiment applies well enough to Standard Stoppages, the group’s new album celebrating their 20th anniversary season. To be sure, the world of the percussion ensemble is an immensely varied one: pretty much anything that can be struck qualifies as an instrument. Accordingly, Stoppages is a veritable cornucopia of sounds experienced in multifarious combinations. Yet in works both big and small, its generous, nearly 80-minute-long program reveals a diversity of fresh, inventive, and satisfyingly expressive voices operating at full tilt. It is, if nothing else, one of the year’s most welcome, enjoyable musical surprises. The disc’s single biggest item (by about 30 seconds) is Tigran Hamasyan’s Sonata for Percussion. Cast in three movements that run the gamut from shimmying asymmetrical meters…
Want to catch up on the year’s best classical recordings? Start here.
November 12, 2025, by Michael Andor Brodeur
Dennehy’s inventiveness finds its rival in fellow Grammy nominees Third Coast Percussion, whose “Standard Stoppages” explores, exploits and explodes time in a more hands-on fashion. The album includes works by Jlin, Jessie Montgomery, Tigran Hamasyan, Zakir Hussain and Musekiwa Chingodza, each realized by the ensemble with lucid precision and a bit of wild abandon.
Music 45 2025: Musicians
October 25, 2025, by David Witter
As Third Coast Percussion celebrates its twentieth anniversary, the group continues to take percussive art to new heights. The ensemble has won one and been nominated for seven collective Grammys, performing worldwide with a wide array of instruments that includes marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel and crotales, as well as homemade objects like tuned metal pipes, metal bars and wooden planks (along with more familiar drums like tom toms, bongos and congas). The ensemble also has a vast, global view: “We’ve incorporated traditions around the world, like the mbira from Zimbabwe, the riq from Egypt and the Middle East, and cloud gongs from Taiwan,” says David Skidmore, ensemble member and executive director. “Some of the musical forms we perform include Shona music from Zimbabwe, Hindustani classical music, jazz, rock, electronic dance music and Indonesian gamelan. I know there are more, but these come to mind right now.” Skidmore is joined by fellow…
Classical Music: Third Coast Percussion marks 20th anniversary
July 7, 2025, by Classical Music
Chicago percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion (TCP) celebrates its 20th anniversary this season. The first percussion ensemble to win a Grammy award, TCP comprises Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore. The quartet has undertaken a landmark season, including a performance at Carnegie Hall, plus collaborations with composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery and Twyla Tharp Dance. As well as a long-awaited return to performing in Germany, TCP's anniversary season has also featured a host of works commissioned and premiered by the ensemble. Skidmore said: 'Our aspiration from the beginning was to support ourselves with a career performing the music that we love all over the world. We're incredibly fortunate to have realised that goal, and in doing so to have helped raise the profile of classical percussion music. What I don't think we could have ever imagined though, was how this path would change us both musically and…
Musical America: Third Coast Percussion Throws Itself a Festival
July 4, 2025, by Hannah Edgar
CHICAGO—In the summer of 2005, four young percussionists gave their first performance as a standalone quartet at Northwestern University, where they’d all studied. Twenty years, a Grammy, and a couple lineup changes later, that group has become one of the country’s leading ensembles of its kind: Third Coast Percussion, Chicago-based but heard everywhere. On June 28, the group marked that milestone with Rhythm Fest, an epic, all-day bash at the Epiphany Center for the Arts on the city’s near west side. For ten hours, collaborators new and old took over the converted church complex, from original Third Coast members (Jacob Nissly, now of the San Francisco Symphony) to recent collaborators (Salar Nader, a tabla virtuoso). Though working with a fraction of the budget of major summer music festivals like Lollapalooza or the Chicago Jazz Fest, Rhythm Fest set a high bar. Operations were smooth, even elegant: A wristband combo—one signaling…
Third Coast Review: Review: Third Coast Percussion Celebrates 20 Years with Rhythm Fest at Epiphany Center
July 3, 2025, by Louis Harris
In a day-long festival of new music, Grammy Award winner Third Coast Percussion celebrated 20 years of making magical music in Chicago. In hosting Rhythm Fest, this percussion quartet of David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors brought together several of the composers with whom it has collaborated and local ensembles who have contributed to Chicago’s incredible contemporary music scene. The venue was the Epiphany Center for Performing Arts on the Near West Side, within which there are several performance spaces that accommodate various musical activities taking place at the same time. Composers and artists who performed include Jlin, Jessie Montgomery, Conrad Tao, Tyondai Braxton, Clarice Assad, Ensemble Dal Niente, the saxophone quartet ~Nois, and, of course, Third Coast Percussion. The emphasis was on rhythm, and everyone provided something percussive in their performances. A very enjoyable performance was offered by a string quintet headed by cellist and composer…
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