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17
Learn MoreJuly 29, 2022, by Laurence Vittes
It was only six years ago that Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion became the first percussion group to win a Grammy in the chamber music category, with an all-Steve Reich CD celebrating the composer’s 80th birthday. Since then percussion groups have become increasingly popular, and this new recital of four premiere recordings demonstrates the kind of high-quality repertoire that is emerging through new compositions and collaborations. In Danny Elfman’s entertaining, finely structured Percussion Quartet there are moments of poetry and, in the last movement, a spectral haunting with chimes. The electronic musician known as Jlin has created in her Perspective a series of stunning études that originated as electronic tracks, from which Third Coast created this performing version, with the painful beauty of ‘Obscure’ and the exquisite chrysalis of ‘Duality’ among the highlights. Third Coast’s arrangement of Glass’s Metamorphosis No 1, inspired by the recording made by Uakti, is dazzling. After all of this…
July 13, 2022, by Michael Beck
Third Coast Percussion and Danny Elfman are a match made in heaven. The American composer's scintillating approach to rhythm and orchestral colour is showcased in a dazzling percussion quartet, while Chicago's finest breathe thrilling new life into Glass' Metamorphosis No. 1.
June 30, 2022, by Richard S. Ginell
Always on the prowl for new music, the four members of Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion came up with a quartet of world-premiere recordings on their latest album, Perspectives (Cedille). Well, three of the four if you want to get technical about it, since one of the premieres is a transcription for percussion of an existing piece. Onetime rockstar, now full-time film composer Danny Elfman has been making inroads into the concert hall with variable success, and his rather pleasing new Percussion Quartet marks the first time that he has written for this configuration. He goes about it in the timeworn format that Haydn and Beethoven would have recognized — a four-movement (fast, slow, scherzo, finale) structure lasting 20 minutes. The movements launch with what sound like homages to Philip Glass or Steve Reich — repeated minimalist patterns in their styles — yet they all find their way out of the initial repetition machine with a firm grip…
June 17, 2022, by James Manheim
"[T]here are so many ways to create classical music," note the members of Third Coast Percussion, "and this album explores four very different approaches that all, in their way, eschew the paradigms of classical music." Third Coast Percussion is a cracklingly good ensemble, but with Perspectives, the group has also created a program that can serve as an introduction to new modes of creation that fall under the large "classical" umbrella. The opening Percussion Quartet of Danny Elfman, more famous for film music and for membership in the rock band Oingo Boingo, is the most conventional of the four works in that it is specified by the composer and realized by the ensemble, but it is a kaleidoscopic and attractive piece incorporating influences from West African balafon music, Indonesian gamelan, and more. The rest of the pieces are more deeply collaborative. Third Coast's reading of Philip Glass' Metamorphosis No. 1 is unique, fusing Glass'…
May 16, 2022, by Tom Huizenga
The style of electronic music and dance known as footwork might appear a strange bedfellow to classical music, but the Grammy-winning group Third Coast Percussion embraces the fleet-footed sound on Perspectives, a new album that pushes the notion of a percussion ensemble into fresh territory. Footwork is the hyper-beat music born in Chicago's underground dance competitions and house parties in the late 1990s. On Third Coast Percussion's album, the style undergoes a mesmerizing transformation in a seven-movement suite called Perspective. The music, which often clocks at 150 beats per minute or more, is by Jerrilynn Patton, a footwork fan who began slicing up her own electronic beats at her parent's home in Gary, Ind. She was working in a nearby steel mill when Dark Energy, her debut album, won her critical acclaim in 2015 — although she says she's tired of journalists trotting out the story. Going by Jlin, the electronic artist has absorbed footwork, but turned it…
, by Louis Harris
No musical techniques benefit more from visual performance than percussion. The number of ways that percussionists can produce sounds is limited only by the number of objects humans and nature have created. Many objects are deliberately made for making music. Some objects produce sounds that are not intended for making music. Most objects are not intended for making sounds at all. Even to the well-trained musician, the item being used to make a sound on a recording is not always obvious. A live performance allows one, for example, to watch a performer rub water-filled bowls or move a bow across a marimba or crotales. Most of the objects onstage at Third Coast Percussion‘s excellent in-person concert on Thursday night were created for making music. The event was billed as a record-release party for TCP’s new release Perspectives, which was reviewed here. In addition to pieces on the new release by Danny Elfman, Phillip…
May 13, 2022, by Philip Montoro
I love Third Coast Percussion—I ranked their 2018 release Paddle to the Sea number one on my list of the best Chicago albums of the 2010s—and I’m a big fan of Jlin. So when I heard that TCP had commissioned music from my favorite experimental footwork producer, I started counting down the days till they’d get a recording out. It took a couple years, but the wait is over: on Friday, May 13, TCP release their new album, Perspectives (Cedille), whose centerpiece is a seven-movement, half-hour suite by Jlin called Perspective. She wrote the suite using software, never creating a notated version, and then TCP worked with her to develop an arrangement, searching through their vast collection of instruments to take optimal advantage of their dazzling variety of sounds, densities, and energies. Jlin’s mutable tracks—sometimes brooding and severe, sometimes frenetic and exhilarating—translate beautifully to an acoustic setting. When their programmed layers are played by hand, they lose the superhuman bass…
May 12, 2022, by Louis Harris
In their latest CD Perspectives, set to be released on May 13, Grammy Award winner Third Coast Percussion continues to expand the concept of classical music composition. Perspectives includes music from composers using traditional, five-lined musical scores with time and key signatures, to artists creating sounds in an environment completely free of traditional notation. Perspectives opens with Danny Elfman’s “Percussion Quartet,” a four-movement work that was specifically written for TCP. Elfman is a very accomplished writer of film scores and onetime front man for the wonderful alternative rock band Oingo Boingo. He was approached for this project by American composer Philip Glass, transcriptions of whose work TCP has recorded several times. Perspectives includes their transcription of Glass’ “Metamorphosis No. 1.“ Electronic Dance Music producer Jlin from Gary, Indiana, uses a different approach. She wrote Perspective using the layering, recording process. TCP premiered this excellent work in a virtual performance in October 2020 and are presenting it here on CD. TCP will be…
, by Tom Huizenga
The fact that the members of Third Coast Percussion are banging on various types of metal on "Derivative" makes a curious connection to its composer, the electronic music producer Jlin (Jerrilynn Patton). In 2015, when she released her debut album, Dark Energy, she was working in the steel mills near her native Gary, Ind. Jlin has come a long way since, taking her lightning quick pulsations, inspired by Chicago's footwork music scene, worldwide and collaborating with artists such as William Basinski, Holly Herndon, and this Chicago-based percussion ensemble. "Derivative" is part of a 30-minute suite called Perspective, and it uncorks a major, if sometimes woozy, groove, fueled by metal bowls filled with water, various gongs and a kick drum-style beat straight out of Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks." Jlin created the entire suite as electronic tracks, one layer at a time, without notation. The Third Coast musicians translated her subtle, interlocking patterns into a version they could perform…
, by Abigail Morici
In Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, for reasons outside of his control, Gregor Samsa wakes up one day as a giant creepy-crawling critter — some say a cockroach — so Gregor has to navigate the world as a giant bug, which as you can imagine is quite an isolating experience. This isolation, in turn, leads to a bleak ending with neglect, hatred, and ultimately death. After going through a year of isolation ourselves, much like Gregor, it’s likely that some of us have a pretty bleak, Kafkaesque outlook on life. But for others, isolation brought new values and a refreshed will to create, learn, and collaborate. This latter case was true for the Grammy-winning percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion and Movement Art Is, founded by dancers and choreographers Jon Boogz and Memphis’ Lil Buck. When in-person interactions could not take place with the two groups based in Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, they worked…