Composed by Michael Gordon in 2022, Field of Vision was first presented as a large-scale site-specific work for the Sunken Garden and the surrounding grounds at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY. Performed on specially constructed and tuned percussion instruments, industrial metals, wood, and gongs, the piece is meant to produce a complex spectrum of overtones and resonances. The large number of percussionists, and the vast performance field, is meant to highlight a sweeping perspective and the architectural movement of sound. "We want to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state - for performer and audience alike - where attention sharpens and dissolves, and thoughts focus and drift," Gordon explains. "In the end, I think the music emerges as an exploration of space itself. Who can tune space? The answer becomes collective: the performers, the instruments, the listeners."

When I first moved to Manchester at the age of sixteen I lived directly beside the large carpark where the Urbis Centre currently stands. For the duration of my time there however this area was a building site and so, for two years, the sounds of hammering metal and the rhythms of machinery dominated my world. Having recently arrived in Manchester from a very quiet rural area this soundtrack was completely new to me and, as a response, I wrote this virtuosic, but playful, percussion solo. � Gavin Higgins

Montréal percussionist David Therrien Brongo dexterously creates dynamic musical worlds on CONFLUENCE, a highly melodic album of solo percussion compositions by French Canadian contemporary composers. Both meditative and stimulating, the album makes for an impressive demonstration of the possibilities of this rare genre. Brongo’s world-class performance is not only highly virtuosic in the technical sense, but also emotionally rich, nuanced, and deeply saturated with empathy. There is a zen-like quality to his interpretations, in which the silences are given as much gravitas as the sound around them, and both notes and rests are searing with constant energy. It’s a remarkable approach, and instantly recognizable.

Multiple Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion (TCP), praised by NPR for championing "borderless music" and "blurring musical boundaries, " celebrates it's 20th anniversary in 2025 with Standard Stoppages, an album inspired by pioneering conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp's idea of twisting standardized units, with works that redefine rhythmic structures and sonic possibilities. Reflecting on two decades-or a "score"-of music-making, the anniversary gives TCP the space to reflect on their many milestones, collaborations, and steps along the journey that have shaped their work over the years, inspiring the group to commission new works for the occasion. This diverse set of commissions makes for a colorful sonic palette of percussive ensemble works, ranging from Zakir Hussain's traditional Hindustani influence to Musekiwa Chingodza's Zimbabwean song to Jessie Montgomery's western contemporary approach. This project brings together both new and past collaborators; with commissioned works from Jlin and Zakir Hussain, alongside fresh contributions from Jessie Montgomery and Tigran Hamasyan. The late Zakir Hussain and the rich Hindustani and tabla traditions were strong sources of inspiration for Third Coast Percussion, most notably through the commissioned work Murmurs in Time. His unexpected passing between the album's recording and release moved TCP to dedicate this project to his memory and enduring legacy. Drawing from Duchamp's Three Standard Stoppages, TCP's 7th recording for Cedille Records invites reflection on the varying paths that lead to unique creative expressions, both for themselves and their collaborators. Standard Stoppages was produced and engineered by Judith Sherman, Colin Campbell, and Bill Maylone. Tracks 1-4 and 7-10 were recorded November 4-8, 2024, and tracks 5-6 October 1-2, 2024, at Narwhal Studios, Chicago, IL; Track 11 was recorded November 15, 2024, at Rax Trax, Chicago, IL.

All World Premiere Recordings

Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion, whose artistry blends “creative fearlessness with reverent precision” (BBC Music Magazine), offers an album of enterprising collaborations and world-premiere recordings of works written or arranged expressly for the Chicago-based percussion quartet, representing four different approaches to composing concert music.

Danny Elfman’s Percussion Quartet, structured like a four-movement symphony, shares distinctive traits heard in his Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated films scores, as well as hints of African balofon, Indonesian gamelan, and Shostakovich. Great admirers of composer Philip Glass, Third Coast arranged Glass’s solo piano Metamorphosis No. 1 for marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, and melodica. Rubix emerged from Third Coast Percussion’s improvisational collaboration with virtuosic, cutting-edge flute duo Flutronix, who also perform on the recording. Critically acclaimed electronic musician and composer Jlin (Jerrilynn Patton) composed her seven-movement Perspective as electronic tracks, without music notation. Third Coast transformed this work of “beautiful complexity” into a version they could perform live as a quartet.

REVIEW:

Unlike a lot of academic music for percussion ensembles, Danny Elfman makes his quartet sing sweetly, leaning heavily on the warm sounds of the marimba interlocking with tinkling tubular chimes and pitched metal pipes.

The flute duo Flutronix's piece, Rubix, features punchy flutes dancing over a chilled out vibraphone, and foggy episodes where marimba, whirly tube and bowed flexatone provide an evocative backdrop of light and shadow.

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, by Jerrilynn Patton, who goes by Jlin.

Third Coast Percussion, with albums like Perspectives, continues to push percussion in new directions, blurring musical boundaries and beguiling new listeners.

-- NPR. org (Tom Huizenga)

In the first half of the 20th century, we encounter a number of luminaries who in a peculiar way are reincarnations of late medieval architects - although the compositional fabric they created is completely different from solid matter. Paul Hindemith was one such guild member, as was his Austrian contemporary Johann Nepomuk David. This recording of David's symphonies works is a further step in producing a first complete recordings of his symphonic works. The Third of eight symphonies from 1940-41 as well as the Seventh, completed in 1956 are on the program. The artist's virtues are obvious. Sometimes they are like painted woodcarvings, sometimes like neat blueprints of motivic connections, using folk song elements even in the most advanced structures. These fascinating works invite the listener to sit down to this compelling music.

Undisputedly brilliant in jazz and rock at all times, the percussion in all its diversity is proving more and more predestined for new music. Leonie Klein, a stirring artist in this field, offers here, partly in duo with Isao Nakamura, a compact, carefully compiled selection of today's music for percussion instruments. A solo version of Peter Eötvös's percussion concerto "Speaking Drums" is performed in true virtuoso style by the interpreter, with the voice of the percussionist joining the sounds of the drums. Vinko Globokar's "Dialog über Erde" experimentally exposes instruments to water, even in a small aquarium - a subtly elemental event. In Sara Glojnaric’s "Latitudes #2", the soloist on the drum set then enters into a breathtakingly virtuoso duel with artificial rhythm impulses from the tape. In Dai Fujikura's "Chattering Birds", the duo gives an astonishing demonstration of how much music is possible while radically reduced to finger cymbals. In Ursula Mamlok's "Variations and Interludes", again arranged for solo by Leonie Klein, the form emerges between the groups of instruments, and Hosokawa's "Windscapes" explores the contrast between vertical accent beats and horizontal sweeping and scratching sounds. And finally, Uroš Rojko's "Ritem kože", after many changes of perspective, constitutes the aesthetically homogeneous virtuoso conclusion to this album.

EGUNGUN: EARTH-SHATTERING PERCUSSION

Ekkozone Records proudly presents the Valencia-based SoXXI Percussion Group and their decade-spanning collaboration with Louis Franz Aguirre (b. 1968), one of the foremost Latin American composers of today.

EGUNGUN features premiere recordings of Aguirre’s ground-breaking percussion sextets, a singular body of work which conjures up the composer’s mystical-religious universe. Elements from traditional Afro-Cuban percussion music, Indian classical music and Iannis Xenakis’s percussion writing are some of the sources that Aguirre draws upon, yet his musical language is wholly original.

Visceral and highly dramatic, the five compositions on EGUNGUN encompass every conceivable dynamic nuance, from evocative gongs and incantations of ancient Yoruba texts to terrifying textures, screams, and a profusion of drums and unconventional metallic percussion sounds, including the unheard-of and stunningly captured sound of electric hammer drills drilling into car rims!

EGUNGUN is the follow-up to Ekkozone’s latest release, ORULA, which was picked as one of the best albums of 2023 by the leading Danish music magazine Seismograf.

This thoughtfully conceived, beautifully executed, and boldly multi-idiomatic new album is a state-of-the-art insight into the unique soundworld of the contemporary marimba. It is also a portrait of the imaginative virtuosity of one of the instrument's finest practitioners engaging in the worlds of both contemporary classical music and jazz with equal devotion and insight. Her choices on this project display the creative boldness that has defi ned her entire career.

Percussionist extraordinaire Joby Burgess returns with his fifth album on Signum Records, "A Percussionist's Songbook" - a collection of specially commissioned 'songs without words' from John Metcalfe, Tunde Jegede, Dario Marianelli, Yazz Ahmed, Graham Fitkin, Dobrinka Tabakova and Gabriel Prokofiev. Scored for an arsenal of pitched percussion and electronics the songbook is inspired by texts ranging from the poetry of Robert Graves and Birago Diop to novels by Michael Ondaatje and Isaac Asimov; American philosopher Michael Sandel, songwriter Peter Gabriel, United Nation population growth statistics and Saudi Arabian folk tales.