BRYCE DESSNER Music for Wood and Strings (performed by So Percussion)
“Dessner’s sensibility as a composer is furtive, urgent, intense... fierce, vivid music.” - Pitchfork Music for Wood and Strings is the official follow-up to Bryce Dessner’s 2013 solo debut Ahyem. But this “solo” record is really the meeting of three great musical entities: Dessner (a member of The National) wrote the piece, renown quartet So Percussion perform it & Aron Sanchez (of Buke and Gase) built the custom “Chordstick” instruments upon which it’s played. The music is pointillist then hazy, distorted then crisp, and always hypnotic, melodic and engrossing. Weighing in at 35 minutes in length, “Music for Wood and Strings” is the most ambitious piece of music Dessner has released to date. The CD and download have a run time of 70 minutes, presenting the the composition both as a full length concert piece, and in 9 “sections” which are sub-divided into Spotify friendly “tracks” ideal for sharing on a playlist or embedding in your Facetube’s blogtweets. The appeal of all three parts of this equation should not be understated. Dessner is the clear winner in terms of name recognition because of his work with today’s most popular independent musicians. However, Sō Percussion— taking after ensembles like Kronos Quartet—have redefined what it is to be a contemporary music ensemble, equally comfortable in the worlds of indie and art music. And it should also make it onto the radar of Buke and Gase fans, an iconic band whose place in underground pop imagines an intersection between Cocteau Twins, Shellac and Reggie Watt. All three artists have found a way to build on the DNA of iconic post-modernist John Cage: pushing experimental culture into the wider world.
RIYL: Steve Reich, Aphex Twin, Philip Glass, The National, Bjork, Buke and Gase, Dan Deacon, Owen Pallett Selling Points • Dessner’s solo debut was a bestseller in the world of classical & experiemental music. • Release will appeal to the distinct cult followings for The National, Buke and Gase and So Percussion • Ample live support with events scheduled in London — Minneapolis, Minnesota —Brimingham, Alabama— Chicago, Illinois — Boston, Mass — and Los Angeles, California.
TRACK LISTING 1. Section 1 2. Section 2 3. Section 3 4. Section 4 5. Section 5 5. Section 6 7. Section 7 8. Section 8
9. Section 9 10. Music for Wood and Strings (Reprise)
Release Date: May 5, 2015 Catalog Number: HWY-045 Formats: CD / LP / Download Genre: Classical, Alternative Distribution: ADA
So Percussion Is So Entertaining At SFJAZZ BY GIACOMO FIORE, February 5, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO JAZZ
I first heard So Percussion about a decade ago at Vanderbilt Recital Hall; I was a student at neighboring Belmont University, attending with a few classmates my first live contemporary music concert. I remember my amazement at at the sudden ending of Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood, as the interlocking textures disappeared into silence after a brief, reverberant lingering. Just like that concert, So Percussion chose Reich’s stripped down, quintessentially minimal essay to open its concert at SFJazz’s Miner Auditorium on February 3rd. Soon after the performance commenced, my ears fell into the
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same, quasi-ecstatic mode of listening as my original exposure, reveling in the complexity that arises from such simple means. So Percussion’s programming decision was brilliant, as the Reich is the kind of self-evident piece that really needs no introduction, its structure unfolding clearly over time, while also priming the audience for what’s to come. The remaining two pieces on the program, though much larger in scope and instrumentation, showed various degrees of indebtedness to the Reichian model, since the featured composers (Steven Mackey and Bryce Dessner) belong to successive generations of American musicians who operate under the multifaceted umbrella of post-minimalism. Dessner’s Music for Wood and Strings (2013) featured four custom instruments, dubbed “chordsticks,” devised by Dessner and built by fellow indie-rocker and instrument builder Aron Sanchez. Part double-guitar neck, part hammered dulcimer, the chordsticks created an ever-changing sound world as they were bowed, plucked, strummed, struck, and brushed over the course of the 40-minute composition. I particularly enjoyed how the timbre of this rustic consort ranged in quality from nearly acoustic to the illusion of electronic synthesis. The four chordsticks are pitched in loose soprano-alto-tenor-bass arrangement, but each instrument features a different tuning configuration of the open strings; luminous diatonic harmonies arose from carefully choreographed hocketing passages. Dessner’s compositional style unites accessibility with a sense of refinement, borrowing liberally from vernacular idioms while displaying structural clarity and an inventive use of instrumental resources. A limited array of unpitched percussions, including a bass drum and several woodblocks, provided an additional layer of timbral variety as well as the opportunity for motives to migrate between the titular strings and wood. After a brief intermission the quartet returned for a performance of Steven Mackey’s It Is Time (2010), also commissioned by So Percussion. It, too, showed no reticence in evoking “nonclassical” textures and sonorities. Mackey, along with Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, and Larry Polansky, was a pioneer in the integration of instruments once considered hopelessly vernacular (such as the electric guitar) in formalized, composed contexts. Regrettably, It Is Time features no guitars, but a drum kit and a set of tuned steel drums expand the more conventional percussion lineup. In addition Mackey employs decidedly unexpected devices such as a mechanical metronome, a set of kitchen timers, a Newton cradle, and a number of wind-up toys.
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What ties together this oddball collection of instruments is their relationship to the tyranny of time. Each of the mechanical devices employed in the piece converts stored, potential energy into kinetic energy (and, as a by-product, sound) for a limited, sometimes ephemeral duration. The musical instruments “proper” (if it makes any sense to make such a distinction today) weaved in and out of the mechanized textures, as each of the four percussionists took the spotlight for a portion of the single-movement, 40-minute composition. Mackey has a strong sense of the theatrical: The music evoked moods ranging from playful to grim, with the musicians moving about the densely populated stage with choreographed focus and precision. From a performance standpoint, So Percussion was simply flawless. There were no hiccups, no hesitations, no errant moments to disturb the complex (and often fragile) sonic architectures they erected. Yet their greatest accomplishment might be the least apparent one: They are perfectly transparent performers, relinquishing histrionics, mannerisms, and flamboyancy in total service to the music. They also have a sense of humor: As the audience clamored for an encore, they appropriately returned to the stage to perform Reich’s Clapping Music. Giacomo Fiore is an Italian-born guitarist and musicologist specializing in U.S. Experimentalism and intonation. He teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory, USF, and UCSC.
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Music review: So Percussion, ACME and yMusic showcase new sounds By Anne Midgette December 2, 2012 The new-music series at the Atlas Performing Arts Center may not be unique in the country, but it’s got to be pretty close: I don’t know of another series entirely devoted to presenting top-flight contemporary groups. Whether or not all of it is to your taste, if you want a snapshot of what’s happening among younger musicians these days, the Atlas series is a good place to get it. On Friday night, the center offered the strongest evidence yet that there’s new vitality to Washington’s contemporary music scene. At 8 p.m., the Atlas presented the New York-based quartet So Percussion in an exhilarating John Cage tribute in its Lang Theater. At 9:30, the Library of Congress rented out the Sprenger theater for its own “Library Late” show, a double bill of the New York ensembles ACME and yMusic. The result was a contemporary triple-header that neither presenter had actually intended, but that certainly acted as a magnet for new-music audiences. Both concerts were reportedly sold out. As if to alleviate anxiety that the first concert would run over and delay the start of the second, the So Percussion event was dominated by an electronic stopwatch projecting a second-by-second 90-minute countdown in glowing white numbers on the back wall. This set up an intriguing counterpoint, since the percussion pieces did not always mark time at the same rate as the stopwatch; there were interference patterns between what was heard and what was seen even as the presence of the stopwatch bound all the disparate works into a single block of time. (There was no intermission.) So’s concert, called “We Are All Going in Different Directions,” picked up on the energy and quality of the Cage festival that opened Washington’s concert season — and featured some of the same pieces, including “Imaginary Landscape #1,” “Quartet for Percussion,” and “Inlets.” You’re not going to hear them done better; this group plays with an irresistible vitality. They juxtaposed some of Cage’s earlier percussion works — the concert opened with “Credo in US” from 1942, with swatches of radio samples and swoops on the prepared piano — with contemporary pieces like “Use” by the 30-something composer Cenk Ergün, who sat on stage with the violist Beth Meyers in silence until his piece activated both of them, he on electronics and she issuing little thoughtful lines from different
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points on the stage. So’s players — Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting — also contributed some pieces of their own. As the 90 minutes ticked down, the event crescendoed into a wonderful, anarchic collage of four different Cage works, dubbed “18’12”,” which included the assortment of Cage’s writings the composer collated as “45’ for a speaker,” read by a man dressed in Cage fashion in a 1960s slim tie and dark-rimmed glasses. Already we had several different measurements of time going on. Meanwhile, the 36-minute mark was the cue to start Dan Deacon’s “Take a Deep Breath.” The piece (printed in the program) specified 14 actions that the audience was to perform at certain dictated points, starting relatively simply with vocalized exhalations, and growing more and more involved: One instruction was to put your phone on speakerphone, call someone not in the room, and ask them to sing. The audience was remarkably, unself-consciously compliant, though there was plenty of laughter as people tried to reassure absent family members of their sanity and sobriety (“Just as long as you’re not driving,” said one man’s mother as she signed off). By the time everyone had switched seats, multiple times (the final instruction), like a dance, there was an air of ease and camaraderie in the room that notably affected the listening climate; we were all in this together, having fun. This was a concert rare in its delightful excellence, and consequently a hard act to follow, and neither ACME nor yMusic could quite manage to do it. These groups are part of the generation after So Percussion, young New Yorkers who merge in various combinations — three of the performers were in both ensembles, including the violist Nadia Sirota, a somewhat ubiquitous figure on New York’s contemporary scene these days. They’re ambitious and full of ideas, but — particularly after the crackling precision of So Percussion — they seemed a little callow, and their presentation fell back on the dutiful “Here’s a piece by X, and now here’s a piece by Y….”
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So Percussion performing “neither Anvil nor Pulley” on Saturday: from left, Jason Treuting, Josh Quillen and Eric Beach. (Adam Sliwinski is not pictured.) By STEVE SMITH Published: March 26, 2010
Time and again during the concert that So Percussion presented at Zankel Hall on Thursday night, you found yourself smiling in a quiet amazement that could verge on disbelief. Sometimes this had to do with a sound whose origin you simply could not determine. In other instances the response had more to do with the extremes of imagination and resourcefulness demonstrated by Dan Trueman and Steven Mackey, the composers of two new pieces on the program. Usually, though, the sensation was prompted simply by trying to process the beguiling mastery with which the players — Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting — went about their work. Their busy doings exhibited no flashy grandstanding, just a workmanlike effectiveness that made the results of their labors seem that much more spectacular. The players’ consummate skillfulness was immediately apparent in their opening volley: a crisp, kinetic account of the first section from Steve Reich’s canonical 1971 work, “Drumming.” But So Percussion’s work calls for more than a steady beat and a knack for paradiddles. To design a motley turret of implements for optimal striking, bowing, shaking and otherwise generating sounds requires an architect and an efficiency expert. You’re an interior designer in mapping out clusters of instruments on the stage for shared use, and a choreographer in figuring out how to get around them. Do it all at once, seamlessly and effortlessly, and you’re an entertainer. In Mr. Trueman’s “neither Anvil nor Pulley,” heard in its first New York performance, three episodes of rustic fiddle music on scratchy vinyl records,
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accompanied with tuned and untuned percussion, alternated with two long electronically enhanced movements. In the work’s second movement, “120bpm (or, What is your Metronome Thinking?),” players shifted in and out of intricate beat patterns with laptop metronomes. In “Feedback (in Which a Famous Bach Prelude becomes Ill-Tempered),” the fourth movement, performers used hand-held microphones to adjust the whine and roar of a bass drum with a loudspeaker cone taped to one drum head, and tugged at modified golf tethers to summon choruses of scruffy wailing. The dazzling results mixed George Crumb’s knack for unearthly timbres, Alvin Lucier’s infinitesimally fine gradations of tone and the fierce creative audacity of Jimi Hendrix. Mr. Mackey’s “It Is Time,” a premiere, dealt with shifting perceptions of time through clockwork machinations, fluid distortions and playful interaction with Mark DeChiazza’s video images, projected on an overhead screen. Each musician was featured at length as a soloist during a beguiling four-movement sequence of mechanical clatter, luminous drones, relaxed jazz-rock grooves and chaotic beats reminiscent of Captain Beefheart’s highly regimented art-rock chaos. Mr. DeChiazza’s stage choreography during one section — a stoic circular march involving cooking timers and wind-up toys — added a further note of whimsy to a consistently beguiling evening.
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Reich strikes a new chord with 'Mallet Quartet' CONCERT REVIEW By Joshua Kosman Published 4:00 am, Monday, January 11, 2010 So Percussion
There may be no better way to consider a new piece by an established composer than in the context of his earlier works. That's especially true when the new music marks a departure as intriguing as Steve Reich's new "Mallet Quartet," which had its U.S. premiere Saturday night at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium. The occasion was a marvelous program by the quartet So Percussion, devoted entirely to Reich's music - mostly the groundbreaking percussion works from the early 1970s that established the composer's rhythmic vocabulary for the ensuing decades. But the headline event was the new score, a beguiling, beautiful and sometimes perplexing creation co-commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts. To understand just how far "Mallet Quartet" ranges from Reich's earlier interests, it was essential to hear those seminal scores, including "Clapping Music," "Music for Pieces of Wood" and "Drumming Part 1." Influenced by his studies of Ghanaian drumming and Balinese gamelan music, as well as the medieval vocal technique known as hocketing, Reich created a signature language of rhythmic counterpoint, in which simple rhythmic patterns mesh to create a smooth, dense weave of undulating sound. And in Saturday's crisply sensitive performances, the quartet - which comprises percussionists Jason Treuting,Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Eric Beach - that language remained as magical and arresting as ever. But in "Mallet Quartet," a 15-minute piece for two vibraphones and two marimbas, Reich takes that rhythmic language completely for granted and turns his attention elsewhere, to harmony. Although the instrumentation here is reminiscent of the composer's early music, as well as his 1976 masterpiece "Music for 18 Musicians," the effect could scarcely be more different. Both rhythm and counterpoint recede into the background, replaced by a series of emphatic block chords that are borne along on a current of busy accompaniment figures. This is the only piece of Reich's I've ever heard that sounds as if it had been composed entirely at the piano. The chords themselves are just as odd, because in place of the composer's usual modal harmonies, "Mallet Quartet" trades in the language of jazz and pop. It unfolds in a series of sharply delineated sections (Reich has never believed much
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in transitions) that cover the gamut from cool jazz to the piano ballads of Carole King. Even the instrumentation has a jazzy feel to it, with the marimbas serving as an unobtrusive rhythm section and the vibraphones doing the solo work. Reich, as spry and engaged as ever at 73, was on hand to bask in the audience's well-merited applause, and to augment the quartet's forces in the opening rendition of "Clapping Music" - still one of his most audacious and breathtaking creations. Percussionist Jim Munzenrider joined the quartet for "Music for Pieces of Wood" and contributed the steady maracas pulse for "Four Organs." The one piece neither old nor new was "Nagoya Marimbas," a gorgeous and deceptively modest duet from 1994.
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At BAM, Home Is Where the Banging Is With 'Where (we) Live,' Brooklyn Ensemble Improvises to Combine Conventional Percussion With Its Collaborators' Art By TAD HENDRICKSON Dec. 18, 2012 11:19 p.m. ET
Themes of family and home are everywhere this time of year, perhaps even more so in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. While conversations often start with an inquiry about holiday plans (staying home or going home?), a few weeks back it centered on your housing status after the storm.
ENLARGE
Eric Beach, Grey McMurray and Jason Treuting rehearsing for 'Where (we) Live' in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. LAUREN DECICCA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Brooklyn-based So Percussion Ensemble is returning to BAM's Next Wave Festival, this time exploring the meaning of home in a new multimedia project titled "Where (we) Live." The evening-length work features original compositions by the quartet of percussionists with invited houseguests Grey McMurray on guitar and vocals and
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notegiver Emily Johnson contributing nightly, while a blacksmith, a painter, a ceramics maker and a furniture maker each stop by for a single-evening collaboration during the Wednesday through Saturday run at the Harvey Theater. "We were fascinated by Jane Jacobs, who wrote 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities,'" recalled So Percussion's Adam Sliwinski, speaking via telephone from rehearsals in Brooklyn. "One thing we latched on to was her idea that cities have diverse and chaotic elements. The idea was that, when neighborhoods evolve in a more organic and chaotic fashion, that's when they thrive." In light of Sandy, the theme of these shows moves from timely for the holidays to poignant with the storm; yet the performance actually expands upon the group's eighth album of the same name, which was released this fall. This performance is the culmination of two years of work by the quartet, which features Mr. Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, Josh Quillen and Eric Beach. Performing in concert halls around the world, the group often uses a wide array of conventional percussion, digital technology and even unorthodox objects such as a coffee mug to perform repertoire by John Cage and commissioned works from contemporary composers like Steve Reich, as well as original works. The ensemble, which was founded at Yale Conservatory of Music in 1999, also takes cues from omnivorous new-music icons like Kronos Quartet and Bang on a Can to step beyond the typical conservatory fare. "Where (we) Live" reaches furthest from its modern classical roots while offering up a vivid portrait of the ensemble itself. "We realized that the four of us are a full-time group that is together every day—we tour together, we practically live together, we've worked together for years," Mr. Sliwinski added. "There are all these concentric circles of people surrounding us. The closest are the four of us. The furthest out is these guest artists who perform one night and only come to one rehearsal." Rather than leaning heavily on text and scores, the ensemble made a point to leave room for improvisation and variation this time. This comes from the players themselves or the notegiver, who passes out slips of paper to individual musicians with messages as abstract as "believe" or as concrete as "stand on your chair." The collaborating artists and artisans are there creating tactile objects, which hopefully inspire the players and the process. "We wanted to preserve all the opportunities to change things in the moment, but to also create a mutually agreed upon contract that contains all the set moments they agreed upon," director/collaborator Ain Gordon explained. "I am a guy who likes scripts that are set to the nth degree, so this was very, very different." The ensemble has worked with a broad cross section of people outside the classical world, including electronic duo Matmos, jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas and indie rockers the Dirty Projectors. The quartet performed early this month at the super-hip All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England, invited by Brooklyn-based alt-rockers the National, who also had the So Percussion Ensemble open for them at the Beacon Theatre.
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Mr. McMurray in particular brings a decidedly rock aesthetic to the beds of percussion and prepared sounds by playing textured squalls of guitar, delicate melodies and offering a strong, plaintive singing voice that might recall Radiohead for some, particularly in the uplifting closing pieces "Strangers All Along" and "Thank You." "We didn't bring Grey in to make the music more accessible," Mr. Sliwinski pointed out. "People talk about blending genres, but we find that it's more successful when you find people you want to work with, and wherever they are coming from finds a way into the mix." Mr. McMurray's singing voice isn't the only voice heard on this project—So Ensemble's Mr. Quillen offers the most personal observations in his narratives, particularly on the haunting "Room and Board." While most of the project's lyrics are not linear, this piece presents a series of detailed recollections that took place in his suburban Cleveland family home. "I'd done a lot of free writing after my dad passed away, and distilled a lot of it down into a little story about my home growing up," Mr. Quillen explained. "For someone who doesn't know me, it's abstract enough where they can put their own stuff on top of it. They may start to remember things about their own home." This recollection is an emotional highlight in the show, but there are other powerful threads as well. Decorative blacksmith Marsha Trattner's Red Hook, Brooklyn, studio and home were both flooded, so she sleeps at a Federal Emergency Management Agency hotel in Sunset Park. "The work is what I know how to do," says Ms. Trattner, who will have a small forge on stage Thursday. "I don't necessarily know how to navigate SBA loans and FEMA paperwork. I hammer metal and work on my torch. If that's a place of home for me, then that's a place of home."
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