Third Coast Percussion Program Book

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Third Coast PercussionTHURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2016 • 8PM

SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016 • 8PM

Third Coast Percussion

Haunt of Last Nightfall

Wild Sound

ROBERT AND MARGRIT MONDAVI CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS PRESENTS

THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2016 • 8PM SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016 • 8PM

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre

The artists and fellow audience members appreciate silence during the performance. Please be sure that you have switched off cellular phones, watch alarms and pager signals. Videotaping, photographing and audio recording are strictly forbidden. Violators are subject to removal.

Fractalia (2011) Owen Clayton Condon (b. 1978)

Resounding Earth, Mvt II. Prayer (2012) Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964)

Trying (2014) David Skidmore (b. 1982)

INTERMISSION

Haunt of Last Nightfall (2010) David T. Little (b. 1978)

Act One I. Curtain, El Mozote— II. Between The Hammer and The Anvil— III. Last Nightfall— IV. Line Up / Face Down— V. Coda: And there was evening ...

Act Two VI. ... and there was morning—the Second Day— VII. Smoldering Hymn— VIII. Prayer (for No. 59) — IX. Postlude: The Girl on La Cruz

THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2016 • 8PM

Nagoya Marimbas (1994) Steve Reich (b. 1936)

Drumkit Quartet #51 (2010) Glenn Kotche (b. 1970)

Music for Pieces of Wood (1973–arranged for 2 drumkits) Reich (arr. David Cossin)

INTERMISSION

Wild Sound (2014) Kotche

SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016 • 8PM

PROGRAM

Fractalia (2011) Former Third Coast Percussion member Owen Clayton Condon writes music influenced by minimalism, electronica and taiko drumming. Condon has been commissioned to write music for the 75th anniversary celebration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater,” and the video and light installation “Luminous Field” at Anish Kapoor’s iconic public sculpture “Cloud Gate” in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

Fractalia, written for Third Coast Percussion, is a sonic celebration of fractals, geometric shapes whose parts are each a reduced-size copy of the whole (derived from the Latin fractus, meaning “broken”). The kaleidoscopic fractured melodies within Fractalia are created by passing a repeated figure through four players in different registers of the marimba.

Resounding Earth, Mvt II. Prayer (2012) Grammy-award winner Augusta Read Thomas was Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony from 1997-2006. Her piece Astral Canticle was one of two finalists for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Thomas was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2009, she has been on the American Music Center Board since 2000, and she is the 16th ever University Professor (of five current University Professors) at The University of Chicago.

Resounding Earth is scored for four percussionists playing bells (and bell-like instruments) from a wide variety of cultures and historical periods. The piece was conceived as a cultural statement celebrating interdependence and commonality across all cultures; and as a musical statement celebrating the extraordinary beauty and diversity of expression inherent in bell sounds.

Bells can be used to celebrate grand occasions, hold sacrificial rites, keep a record of events, give the correct time, celebrate births and weddings, mark funerals, caution a community, enhance any number of religious ceremonies, and are even hung around the necks of animals.

About Resounding Earth, Thomas says:

“Bells are central to my music; bells permeate my music. For over 25 years, in every work for orchestra, and in many for smaller ensembles, I have been composing music frequently using percussion consisting of bell sounds (pitched metal percussion and all the mallet percussion instruments) many of which have their origins in other than Western musical cultures. As such, this new piece is an extreme extension of work I have been doing for decades.”

Resounding Earth was commissioned by the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, with additional funding from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Department of Music, and the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.

Trying (2014) The compositions of Third Coast Percussion member David Skidmore are performed regularly in concert halls and universities across the country. His Unknown Kind was premiered in Carnegie Hall in 2007, and his multi-movement work Common Patterns in Uncommon Time was commissioned in 2011 for the 100th anniversary of Taliesin, site of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

Trying is a 3-movement work that explores layering of multiple rhythmic cycles. The work draws inspiration from the driving but metrically ambiguous heavy metal of Swedish band Meshuggah and the kaleidoscopic percussion writing of composer Alejandro Viñao, but lives in a more transparent sound world, where each repeating voice floats against the others in its own metric cycle.

Haunt of Last Nightfall (2010)

David T. Little’s potently dramatic music draws upon his experience as a rock drummer, and fuses classical and popular idioms to powerful effect. From 2010–2012, Little was the executive director of the MATA Festival. He is currently Director of Composition at Shenandoah Conservatory, Composer-in-Residence with Opera Philadelphia, and the founding artistic director of the amplified chamber ensemble Newspeak. The New York Times cited Little’s first full-length opera, Dog Days, as one of two highlights of the season, stating that the work “proved beyond any doubt that opera has both a relevant present and a bright future.” Little’s music has been performed around the world, and upcoming and recent commissions and performances include Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, the Los Angeles Opera and the Fort Worth Opera. Haunt of Last Nightfall was commissioned by Third Coast Percussion. The work was recorded for New Amsterdam Records and released in February 2014.

THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2016 • 8PM | PROGRAM NOTES

T H I R D C O A S T P E R C U S S I O N 2

Haunt of Last Nightfall

I think a lot about ghosts. Not so much in the literal sense of sheet-wearing specters, but rather, of things ghostly in function. That is, things that remain behind as the fleeting evidence of what once was. For some reason—perhaps for the same reason as the monk of old’s memento mori—I have always felt the need to surround myself with these kinds of ghosts.

The studio where I compose, for example, is full of mementos: objects from past projects, trinkets from past travel, and most notably, old photographs. I have collected these antique photos for about 10 years, not for the photographic quality—I know little about photographic history—but for the mysterious stories they may tell of the people whose images they hold. They are, in a sense, my ghosts. They lived full lives once upon a time, these people. They had husbands, wives, children, joy and pain. They were no different, really, than you or me. And yet here they are, preserved in a single moment—perhaps the only evidence of their existence—itself gradually fading. I have no idea who any of them are, specifically, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In a certain sense, they each are all of us. Although this peculiar passion of mine is at the core of this composition, it’s not really what the piece is about. Rather, the “ghost” here is an atrocity that happened long ago, the memory of which I just can’t seem to shake. Specifically, it is the massacre at El Mozote, El Salvador, December 10th through 12th 1981, in which an entire village was erased by U.S. military-trained Salvadoran government forces, with American-made and provided arms. Now, I have no interest in getting on a soapbox about El Mozote, or related issues; that is, in fact, the last thing that I want. It’s just that since reading about the massacre—first in Bob Ostertag’s Creative Life, and later in Mark Danner’s The Truth About El Mozote—I have been plagued by two questions: first, how did I never know that this had happened? (The answer to this is fascinating and upsetting.) And second, why am I completely unable to get it out of my mind; to move on? It haunts me. It has been, for the last 15 months, my ghost. I cannot forget the story of the young boy—now known only as “No. 59,”—who was lucky enough to have a toy, though it could not protect him from the bayonet. I cannot forget the separation of families that happened on the morning of the second day—men to the right, women and children to the left—reminiscent of another atrocity, forty years earlier. I cannot forget the girl on La Cruz, a local hill, who is said to have sung a hymn as soldiers repeatedly raped her. Legend holds that even after they murdered her, her body kept singing, stopping only when they cut off her head. I cannot forget that this village, innocent by virtually every account, was slaughtered, caught in the crossfire of a stupid ideological battle. I would never say something so boldly reductive as “their blood is on our hands.” We all know that scenarios like these are neither that simple, nor all that unique. But I know that I have been unable to shake this ghost, and consequently felt that I had no choice but to write this piece. What we know shapes us, and whether I like it or not, I now know this. —David T. Little


Nagoya Marimbas (1994)

American composer Steve Reich is widely viewed as one of the most influential composers of the last 100 years. While many composers of the mid-20th century were crafting music driven by complex theoretical and numerical systems, Reich was determined to create music that progressed through clearly audible processes. His Music for Pieces of Wood (arranged here for two drum kits) is a study in economy of means, both in terms of physical and musical materials. The three sections of the work are each comprised of a single rhythm, with a new version of the pattern building up in each voice before blending into the texture. Many of the rhythms that emerge along the way suggest alternative meters or rhythmic inflections that may change the listener’s perception of the whole. Nagoya Marimbas utilizes more complex and varied melodic patterns on the marimbas, but is still built on tight canons, with both musicians playing the same pattern one just slightly after the other to create an energized and kaleidoscopic whole.

The album Third Coast Percussion | Steve Reich was released in February 2016 on Cedille Records.

Chicago-based percussionist and composer Glenn Kotche has been called one of the most exciting, creative and promising composers and performers in modern music, receiving international attention for his “unfailing taste, technique and discipline” (Chicago Tribune). After three solo records, including his 2006 album Mobile (Nonesuch Records), Kotche released his fourth studio album Adventureland in 2013, featuring works Kotche has written for world-renowned ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Bang on a Can All-Stars and eighth blackbird. His compositions have been performed at venues as wide-ranging as Chicagoland’s Ravinia, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York and Teatro Castro Alves in Salvador, Brazil.

In addition to his work as a composer and solo percussionist, Kotche is a member of the groundbreaking American rock band Wilco, with whom he has played since 2001. With Wilco, he has recorded Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Kicking Television, as well as the Grammy nominated Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) and The Whole Love and the Grammy-winning A Ghost is Born. In 2010, Kotche and his Wilco bandmates started their own music festival, Solid Sound, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). Kotche contributed a permanent sound installation to the museum’s collection, created for the 2011 festival.

Beyond Wilco, Kotche records and performs regularly along with Darin Gray in the longtime rhythm duo On Fillmore. Together they have released four records, the most recent being Extended Vacation about which Pitchfork wrote, “These seven interwoven pieces delight... it reveals two focused,

imaginative composers and performers.” He is also a member of the trio Loose Fur, along with Jim O’Rourke and Jeff Tweedy, who have just recorded their third studio record. A frequent collaborator, Kotche has appeared on over 90 records to date.Kotche has twice appeared on the cover of Modern Drummer and once on the cover of Percussive Notes, the official publication of the Percussive Arts Society, of which Kotche is currently a board member. He resides in Chicago with his wife and two children.

Drumkit Quartet #51 (2010) While touring the world with Wilco, Kotche began making sketches for a series of pieces each inspired by different cities through which he was travelling. Kotche made 54 of these sketches in total, many of which became a collection of “Drumkit Quartets” written for the New York-based quartet So Percussion. These works were all written for drumkits initially, but later re-scored for everything from marimbas and cowbells to sirens and disposable cameras. In Drumkit Quartet #51 (Tokyo/Brisbane/Berlin) the four musicians surround two marimbas, creating a melody of raindrops with overlapping descending figures that unfold at different speeds. The accompanying electronic audio track includes recordings from the cities that inspired this quartet, as well as a haiku that captures the spirit of the music, written by Kotche and read by Yuka Honda (of the band Cibo Matto):

blinking fresh raindrops full ephemeral anchor placidity hush

Wild Sound (2014)

Wild Sound, the centerpiece of tonight’s program, is a project almost six years in the making. When Third Coast Percussion first approached Glenn Kotche about a collaborative project, the discussions quickly turned to a point of common interest and admiration among the musicians—their exploration and creation of new sounds. Kotche has long had a reputation for developing his sonic palette in creative ways, such as his “prepared snare drum” which functions both as a traditional snare drum and a resonator for a variety of springs, wires and rods attached to the head, and Third Coast Percussion’s repertoire has included performing on tin cans and piano guts for the music of John Cage and building their own “Sixxen” for music by Philippe Manoury and Iannis Xenakis. As Wild Sound has taken shape through years of discussion and experimentation, it has become a work that fully embraces Cage’s philosophy that all the world’s sounds are music, and that the percussionist’s job is to bring all of those sounds to the stage.

SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2016 • 8PM | PROGRAM NOTES


Wild Sound utilizes no standardized instruments—every instrument used was created specifically for this project, and many of them will be created on stage during the performance. The act of creating and discovering sounds becomes part of the music, brought into dialog with live performance on the instruments and a pre-recorded audio track made up of the everyday sounds from a number of different environments. As the piece progresses through four different types of sonic environments—wilderness, rural, industrial and urban—it mirrors a history of human innovation and creativity, with instruments born from the desire to express ideas musically, derived from the materials at hand, and ultimately called upon to interact with the sounds and context of the world around us.

As an audience member, you will have the opportunity to become a part of the performance at select moments, both with the instrument you received upon entry and with your own body. The performers will lead you when the time is right.

Wild Sound is the result of a rigorous collaboration between Glenn Kotche, Third Coast Percussion, stage director Leslie Danzig, video artist Xuan, audio engineer Dan Nichols, lighting designer Sarah Prince, and a team of engineers from the University of Notre Dame’s College of Engineering who assisted in dreaming up, designing and building the instruments used in this work through the NDWaves summer internship. The NDWaves team is: Quinlan McWilliams, Susan Nace, John Nolan, Ryan Snelling , Juan Velazquez, Tony Villano, Xinyi Wang , Professor Jay Brockman and Professor Douglas Hall.

Wild Sound was commissioned by the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund. Additional support provided by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series.


Hailed by The New Yorker as “vibrant” and “superb,” Third Coast Percussion explores and expands the extraordinary sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire, delivering exciting performances for audiences of all kinds. Formed in 2005, Third Coast Percussion has developed an international reputation with concerts and recordings of inspiring energy and subtle nuance.

These “hard-grooving” musicians (The New York Times) have become known for ground-breaking collaborations across a wide range of disciplines, including concerts and residency projects with engineers at the University of Notre Dame, architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, astronomers at the Adler Planetarium and more. The ensemble enhances the performances it offers with cutting edge new media, including free iPhone and iPad apps that allow audience members to create their own musical performances and take a deeper look at the music performed by Third Coast Percussion.

Third Coast Percussion is the Ensemble-in-Residence at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, a position they assumed in 2013. They have the honor of being the first ensemble at the University of Notre Dame to create a permanent and progressive ensemble residency program at the center. Third Coast Percussion performs multiple recitals annually as part of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center’s Presenting Series, engages with the local community, and leads interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with a wide range of disciplines across campus.

Third Coast’s recent and upcoming concerts and residencies include the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Cross-linx Festival (Netherlands), NFM Wroclaw (Poland), De Doelen (Rotterdam), Town Hall Seattle, Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival (CO), Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Liquid Music Series (MN), National Gallery of Art (DC), University of Chicago Presents, the Austin Chamber Music Festival, and more. Third Coast has introduced percussion to chamber music audiences in Texas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Illinois, securing invitations to return to many of these series.

Third Coast’s passion for community outreach includes a wide range of residency offerings while on tour, in addition to a long-term residency with the Holy Cross/Immaculate Heart of Mary Marimba Ensemble on Chicago’s South Side.In addition to its national performances, Third Coast Percussion’s hometown presence includes an annual Chicago series, with four to five concerts in locations around the city. The ensemble has collaborated in concert with a wide range of artists and performing ensembles including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, eighth blackbird, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, and video artists Luftwerk.

The members of Third Coast Percussion—Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore—hold degrees in music performance from Northwestern University, the Yale School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory, and Rutgers University. Third Coast Percussion performs exclusively with Pearl/Adams Musical Instruments, Zildjian Cymbals, Remo Drumheads, and Vic Firth sticks and mallets.

Leslie Buxbaum Danzig (stage director, Wild Sound) is a collaborating director with Lucky Plush Productions, a Chicago-based dance-theater company, where she co-created/co-directed (with Julia Rhoads) The Better Half and The Queue, both of which received a National Dance Project Award and a National Performance Network creation fund award (2012 and 2014). Presenting venues include MCA Chicago; Spoleto Festival USA (SC); CRASHarts at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Dance Cleveland; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (MD); Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (VT); ODC (San Francisco); Portland Ovations (Maine); Maui Arts & Cultural Center; The Yard (Martha’s Vineyard); and Connecticut College. Danzig is co-founder and former director with the Chicago-based physical theater company 500 Clown, which has performed in Chicago at Steppenwolf and Lookingglass Theatre, among others, and has toured throughout the U.S. Other theater credits include co-directing (with Frank Maugeri) Redmoon’s The Elephant and the Whale, with Chicago Children’s Theater, and Redmoon’s Hunchback at New Victory Theater (NYC); directing Float with About Face Theater; and directing a Fall 2015 production at The House Theater of Chicago. She received her PhD in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and trained in physical theater at Écoles Jacques Lecoq and Philippe Gaulier. She is the curator of the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, a laboratory for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars.

Video artist Xuan’s interest in film developed while studying towards a degree in musical performance. Now a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, she has also completed numerous video works, commissions, and collaborations with performing artists. As a video artist, she is especially drawn to abstract imagery in correlation to the interpretation of music. Her distinct and unconventional background allows her to see connections between sound and image in an insightfully unique way.

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