In celebration of their 25th year together as one of the most adventurous and influential percussion ensembles in contemporary music, So Percussion announces the release of 25x 25. In keeping with the group's forward-looking mission, this 8-disc box set is not a retrospective; more characteristically, it's a stand-alone listening experience, featuring more than 8 hours of entirely new and previously unreleased recordings, with each piece written for, in collaboration with, and premiered by So Percussion. Over the last 25 years, the members of So - Jason Treuting, Adam Sliwinski, Josh Quillen, and Eric Cha-Beach - have been hailed for their gripping performances and wildly creative collaborations. Cantaloupe Music (the label launched by the Bang on a Can collective, which released So's first-ever album in 2004), is pleased to offer this collection to longtime fans and newcomers alike. It's both a comprehensive portrait, and a forecasting of where contemporary chamber music is heading.
Since 1999, So Percussion has been creating music that explores all the extremes of emotion and musical possibility. It has not been an easy music to define. Called an “experimental powerhouse” by the Village Voice, “astonishing and entrancing” by Billboard Magazine, and “brilliant” by the New York Times, the Brooklyn based quartet’s innovative work with today’s most exciting composers and their own original music has quickly helped them forge a unique and diverse career.
Threads, written for So Percussion in 2005, is a half-hour long “cantata” for percussion quartet in ten short movements. There are three “threads” that are interwoven in the piece: Arias and Preludes that focus on the metallic pitched sounds of vibraphones, glockenspiel and pipes; Choruses in which drumming predominates; and Recitatives made largely from Cage-like noise instruments, bottles, flower pots, crotales, etc. The aim of the different threads is to highlight the wide range of qualities that percussion instruments are capable of, from lyrical and tender to forceful and aggressive, and weave them into one continuous “thread”.
This DVD features a hand drawn pictographic score consisting of 12 panels (totaling 70 feet in length), 2 hanging mobiles, and absolutely no verbal or written instructions. It was commissioned by the Cantor Arts Center Museum at Stanford University.
The ostensible follow-up to So Percussion co-founder and composer Jason Treuting's ambitious work Nine Numbers, Go Placidly with Haste is a multi-movement sonic meditation that actually bears a more distinct connection to Treuting's early work Amid the Noise (2006) - which began as a soundtrack, then morphed into So Percussion's third album, and from there into a communal music-making project that can occur with a flexible number of musicians in almost any combination. Go Placidly takes up that thread and weaves it into a vivid tapestry of moods, styles and genres, from the oddly folk-inflected strains of "1927" (featuring Irish singer and Afro Celt Sound System mainstay Iarla o Lionaird) to the Eno-esque keyboards and electronics of "White Diamond," the frenetic and angular "Build Up," the mournful and stately "Slow Moving Chords" (with singer-songwriter Sam Amidon), the groove-chasing "Four Lines" (with composer and singer Angelica Negron) and plenty more. By turns whimsical, expansive and exploratory, this is new music in the most thrilling and adventurous sense of the word.
