TCP shows future of percussion music is bright in Currents program
As severe weather alerts pinged patrons’ phones, the musicians of Third Coast Percussion were just beginning their annual Currents concert. Fortunately, the audience was blissfully unaware of the storm raging outside the windowless theater as the electronic chimes blended in with the dulcet tones of the marimba.
Thursday night’s concert featured three premieres from TCP’s Currents Creative Partnership, a program that mentors composers at the beginning of their careers or who want to explore percussion repertoire. The results were accomplished, varied, and innovative, showcasing the Grammy-winning ensemble’s virtuosity across different instruments and styles and their willingness to experiment and explore.
The concert was held at Constellation, a small venue in a former Roscoe Village warehouse that presents jazz, experimental, and contemporary classical music. The intimate black-box theater setting, with just a few rows of seats flanking the artists on three sides, proved an ideal way to experience this music, allowing audience members to see the action up close, more than they might have in a bigger concert hall.
The program began with the premiere of Precipice, a short marimba quartet by one of TCP’s own, Sean Connors. Connors put his colleagues through their paces with hypnotic cross-rhythms and a virtuosic cadenza, ending dramatically with a synchronized lighting blackout.
Representing the only non-premiere on the program was JaRon Brown’s and this too, shall pass. Commissioned by Nova Linea for TCP earlier this season, the piece was again scored for marimba quartet, but with all four percussionists playing on one marimba rather than two, as in Precipice. This resulted in a dense, intricate texture, which was enlivened by diverse attacks, such as playing with the wooden end of the mallet and even striking the side of the instrument.
Asuka Kakitani’s There Used to Be a Christmas Tree Farm Near My House was the first of the evening’s Currents premieres. The four-movement work was inspired by a patch of forest near Kakitani’s house in Minnesota that was eventually turned into a housing development. The Japanese-born composer wondered what happened to the plants and wildlife that used to call the woods home and imagined their confusion and fear, later connecting this to the experience of immigrants.
Although scored predominantly for marimba punctuated by kick drum, the piece was differentiated enough from the previous two works. The first movement, “Warning,” was appropriately foreboding, beginning with dramatic chords. Bowed marimba created an eerie, glassy effect in the spare-textured second movement, “Listen to Their Song,” while “Run, Friends, Run,” ended in a virtuosic cascading figure. “No, You Can’t Get Rid of Us” featured another innovative technique, with the musicians tapping the marimba keys with their fingers to create a haunting echo-like sound.
The second half saw a new configuration of instruments—a welcome sight after 30 minutes of marimba music, as varied and expertly played as it was. Sebastian Zhang’s wild ink crossroads introduced TCP to a new instrument: the asalato. Also known as a kashaka, the traditional West African percussion instrument consists of two spheres filled with seeds or beads, tethered by a cord. Each player held two asalatos, which they played either by swinging them around their hands, shaking them, or tapping them near their open mouths to create different resonating pitches.
The work built in instrumentation across the three movements to include desk bells and, later, a drum kit and mallet percussion. TCP impressed with their incredible coordination as they added more instruments to the texture, all while continuing to play the asalatos and maintaining an air of ease and playfulness throughout.
Dan McGee’s lost in a mind, with approximate directions closed the program, offering yet another completely different perspective. His was the only piece to blend electronic elements with live percussion. With pre-recorded piano, heavy reverb, and a vocal layer processed through a harmonizer, McGee’s piece was the most genre-bending of the night, bringing to mind pop artists like Bon Iver or James Blake.
At first, the live percussion sounds were buried by the synthesized ones, TCP’s presence seeming almost incidental. However, the percussion became more dominant as the piece progressed to the point of verging on too loud, particularly the high-pitched sonorities. The musicians were wearing earpieces, presumably listening to a click track to coordinate with the recorded media, so perhaps they couldn’t hear how loud it was at times for the small space. Balance issues aside, McGee’s piece was an atmospheric and enjoyable conclusion to a lively and varied program.
Third Coast Percussion’s Currents program will be repeated 8:30 p.m. Friday at Constellation. https://www.thirdcoastpercussion.com/event/currents-at-constellation-8/
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