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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.
Chicago Reader: Chicago Record Report: April 2025 – Third Coast Percussion, Standard Stoppages
April 29, 2025, by Philip Montoro
Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore formed Third Coast Percussion in 2005, and this album marks the quartet’s 20th year with world-premiere recordings of six compositions by experimental footwork producer Jlin, Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan, tabla master Zakir Hussain, violinist Jessie Montgomery, and Zimbabwean mbira and marimba player Musekiwa Chingodza. Hussain and Chingodza both perform on their pieces (Hussain passed away two months after the sessions), and Chingodza’s fizzy, buoyant mbira and clarion-strong singing on “Dzoka Kumba” make for a sparkling tune that’s both heart-stirring and danceable. Hussain uses patterns within patterns, creating churning ruminations and gently exploratory gestures, and on the first movement of Murmurs in Time he layers bols (syllables used as mnemonics in the learning of tabla) until they sound almost as hectic as the monkey chant from a Balinese kecak performance. Jlin, whose TCP commission Perspective was a 2023 finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, adapts material from the “Kyrie…
Little Village: Review: Third Coast Percussion and Jessie Montgomery let Hancher audience inside their cutting-edge collaboration
, by Mauricio Ruiz
The plastic hose hangs from his mouth. It is plugged into the drum in front of him, like an oxygen line breathing life into the instrument. He beats the skin of the drum, eyes following the notes on the score in front of him, glimpsing the movements of the other percussionists on stage, the members of the Third Coast Percussion. He needs to be in tempo with them, too. He breathes into the hose, a soft but constant flow, and as the pressure inside the drum increases, the pitch changes. Every time he beats the drum the sound is slightly different. He has to control the movement of his arms and follow the music on the score, all while controlling the rate at which air leave his lungs. It’s a masterful act of coordination. The piece in question is “Lady Justice, Black Justice, The Song” by 2024-2025 Hancher composer-in-residence Jessie…
Musical America: Chicago’s Preeminent Music Ensembles Turn to Terpsichore
April 22, 2025, by Hannah Edgar
CHICAGO— In the 1990s, no less an eminence than Alfred Brendel urged Twyla Tharp to choreograph Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Why? "It's so funny," he reportedly told the contemporary ballet dancemaker. Funny? That's probably not the first descriptor that jumps to mind for the sprawling piano variations. But it speaks to Tharp's vision that one leaves her Diabelli (1998)—sometimes zany, always ecstatic—very much taking Brendel's point. Otherwise, the thrill of accessing an unfamiliar emotion in a familiar setting proved elusive last weekend, when Tharp, celebrating her Diamond Jubilee (60th anniversary) as a choreographer, and the Joffrey Ballet presented new- and new-to-Chicago dances alongside local musical eminences: the Joffrey at Symphony Center with the Chicago Symphony (April 10), and Twyla Tharp Dance at Harris Theater with Third Coast Percussion, flutist Constance Volk, and pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev (April 11). Arguably, only Diabelli, the oldest dancework of the bunch, achieved it. In it, Beethoven's…
CONCERTO: An infectious tribute to Philip Glass at Teatro Cultura Artística
April 18, 2025, by João Marcos Coelho
What we saw at the Third Coast Percussion concert was a very high level of precision, cohesion and expressiveness, showing that the American is indeed one of the greatest composers of our time. The audience nearly filled the new and welcoming Teatro de Cultura Artística on Monday to watch the first concert in Brazil by Third Coast Percussion, a quartet of North American percussionists celebrating their twentieth anniversary. And they shared flawless, precise performances of minimalist music. In fact, a repertoire in tribute to Philip Glass, the greatest pope of music that the French ironically call repetitive. In the first part, his first-time partner, Steve Reich (now 88 years old), sandwiched himself between young composers in their 40s, such as the Englishman Devonté Hynes, the [American] Jlin living in the US (full name Jerrilynn Patton), and David Skidmore (member of Third Coast). The entire second part was reserved for Glass.…
BBC Music Magazine: Aguas da Amazonia Review
, by Anne Templer
This set of Philip Glass compositions, arranged by Third Coast Percussion visits the watery terrain of the Amazon and manages to conjure up that soundworld through a series of liquid, glassy sounds using a unique combination of instruments. Glass and redwood marimbas, an almglocken, tuned pvc pipes and a ‘sun’ drum combine with timbres on synths and some wonderful flute sounds by Constance Volk. The opening few bars sound as if they are going to take us into a Yes or Genesis album. It certainly explores some of that Prog Rock soundworld, but then visits territory geographically, musically and spiritually much further away. Far from being constantly floaty and ethereal however, there is some real energy and propulsion. ‘Negro River’ for example has some really strong rhythmic chops with the use of pipes (sounding a little like whirly tubes) and a very wooden, percussive sounding marimba. The range of sounds…
Chicago Tribune: Twyla Tharp Dance celebrates 60 years with something old, something new in stunning night at the Harris
April 15, 2025, by Lauren Warnecke
It starts where "In the Upper Room" ends. The opening image of Twyla Tharp's newest dance, "Slacktide," is a single dancer, facing upstage, a beam of white light illuminating only his forearm. He slowly, methodically, closes his fist and draws his elbow down toward his waist. It's a fist pump. A transposition of the final moment in Tharp's 1986 tour de force. For "Slacktide" — which forms the back half of Tharp's 60th anniversary "Diamond Jubilee" running through Saturday at the Harris Theater — the prolific choreographer revisited composer Philip Glass for the first time since "In the Upper Room." A thrilling interpretation of Glass' 1999 half-hour score "Aguas da Amazonia" has been realized by Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion, who play live at the Harris with Chicago flutist Constance Volk. Third Coast, by the way, is celebrating a milestone of its own, releasing a 20th anniversary album Friday with works…
Chicago Sun-Times: Twyla Tharp’s ‘Diabelli’ glistens as legendary choreographer celebrates her diamond jubilee
April 14, 2025, by Kyle MacMillan
“I figured I’d better couch my diagonals and spirals in sex and surprise,” Twyla Tharp wrote in her 1992 autobiography, “Push Comes to Shove,” explaining her early approach to dance, and that description remains apt. The 83-year-old New Yorker ranks among the influential and innovative dancemakers of her generation, creating more than 150 works that can be complex and conceptual but also cool and funky. As vital and active as ever, Tharp is marking her 60th anniversary as a choreographer with a high-profile, cross-country tour featuring her 12-member company, Twyla Tharp Dance. In what is arguably the most anticipated event of the Chicago dance season, the company presented the first of three performances Thursday evening at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, reaffirming it as Chicago’s pre-eminent dance venue. (Tharp was not in attendance.) Given Tharp’s standing in the dance world, it is no surprise that she has put together…
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN: Third Coast Percussion’s “Standard Stoppages” Honors Two Decades of Innovative Music-Making
April 10, 2025, by Michelle Hromin
In celebration of the ensemble’s 20th anniversary, Third Coast Percussion’s Standard Stoppages (Cedille Records) reflects on the passage of time in both a musical and a literal sense. Featuring works by Jlin, Tigran Hamasyan, Jessie Montgomery, Musekiwa Chingodza, and the late Zakir Hussain, the album nods to the role of the percussionist as ‘timekeeper’ while showcasing dream collaborations and long-time friends. Jlin’s Please Be Still opens the album with waves of familiarity as it winks to J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor with tiny pointed phrases, delicate lifts, and dovetailing cascades. But the overarching aesthetic of this collaborative composition is a twinkling of industrial sounds, scratches, rattles, and shakers that dust the surface of melodic fragments seamlessly traded by marimba and vibraphone. Jlin’s electronic music influences are apparent, and her balancing of drum kit with pitched percussion is glorious – there is something so magical about the frenetic collection of sounds she packs into such a…
WBEZ Chicago: Twenty years in, classical stars Third Coast Percussion keep upping the ante
, by Courtney Kueppers
Click here to listen to the full interview. The Chicago quartet Third Coast Percussion is well-versed in high-profile, cross-genre collaborations. In the 20 years since the group’s scrappy start as Northwestern University students, they have worked with leading composers, from the legendary Philip Glass to Chicago-based classical superstar Jessie Montgomery. They’ve also embraced less expected projects, like an evening-length work that combined percussion music with Memphis-meets-Miami–style street dance. This week, Third Coast’s latest buzzy partnership arrives at Chicago’s Harris Theater after stops in Minneapolis, New York and Washington, D.C., that left plenty of critical praise in their wake. The three-night run features the percussionists (joined by flutist Constance Volk) playing a reimagined arrangement of a sweeping 1990s Philip Glass composition, paired with new choreography from the legendary dancemaker Twyla Tharp. The performances are part of Tharp’s coast-to-coast tour celebrating 60 years as a revolutionary choreographer, and Third Coast is a key aspect of the…
Corrina’s Substack: Talk it Out
March 10, 2025, by Corrina Da Fonseca-Wollheim
I wrote a blip of an article in the New York Times this week about a percussion performance at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall. We have a monthly feature for singling out musical moments, not in the form of a review so much as a spotlight on an aspect of a performance we can’t stop thinking about. The full concert by Third Coast Percussion on February 27 included Jlin’s scintillating “Please Be Still,” a haunting “Lady Justice / Black Justice, The Song” by Jessie Montgomery and Tigran Hamasyan’s sensuous Sonata for Percussion. From a purely where-can-I-hear-that-again point of view, that last one was my favorite piece on the whole program. But I was unexpectedly moved by “Murmurs in Time” by the late tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain. He passed away last December, after recording this work (scored for tabla and percussion quartet) with Third Coast. At Zankel one of his students, Salar Nader, took on…
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