So Percussion
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September 27th, 2007 - Hollywood
SO PERCUSSION
Members: Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, Lawson White
If there was a line, then So Percussion crossed it. They'd never been just another modern performance ensemble anyway. Following two acclaimed albums of rigorous music by modern master Steve Reich and even-more-modern masters David Lang and Evan Ziporyn, as well as ongoing collaborations with hepcat Bjork producers Matmos, the 20-something quartet has discovered a bold new voice: their own.
Called "astonishing and entrancing" by Billboard, "brilliant" by the New York Times, the discovery is perfectly appropriate. Coming together in the green pastures of New Haven at Yale's graduate program, So Percussion was created to give fresh voice to what co-founder Jason Treuting calls "funky contemporary music." Devoted to the conceptual dreamscapes of Reich, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, and others, So established a disciplined work ethic, learning pieces whole -- memorized and absorbed -- instead of merely read. A blind call to Bang on a Can founder David Lang yielded a commission. Called "a must-hear" by Billboard, their self-titled debut featured Lang's "the so-called laws of nature."
In 2004, realizing Steve Reich's nine-part "Drumming" as a quartet, they made one small step for music, one radical step for a percussion group: they overdubbed -- and to great success. Having explored the past, in the form of Reich's classics, and the present, in the form of Lang and Ziporyn's freshest, it was time for So to start exploring the future.
In that vein, their newest CD/DVD Amid the Noise began as an after-hours project. Eager to expand their palette, the members of So experimented with glockenspiel, toy piano, vibraphones, bowed marimba, melodica, tuned and prepared pipes, metals, a wayward ethernet port, and all kinds of sound programming. The resulting idiosyncratic tone explorations were synchronized to Jenise Treuting?s haunting films of street scenes in Manhattan and Tokyo.
"If you're sick of the sounds you've got, you go and find more," declares Sliwinski of the group's sonic philosophy. "There's always something to hit or rub or whatever." It is an approach they have taken with them to countless educational programs, ranging from teaching adolescents to masterclasses with student percussionists and composers at Juilliard, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Toronto, The Moscow Conservatory, and many other schools. It also has inspired them to commission dozens of composers to write for this most eclectic of instrumental groups. With the list spanning from such notables as David Lang and Paul Lansky to emerging talents Cenk Ergun, Dennis DeSantis and Suzanne Farrin, this unique repertoire has been heard at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and The Knitting Factory in New York, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and Montreal?s Le National, to name a few. In fact, So is one of the only outfits that can play at a major concert hall and with indie's hippest producers within 24 hours.
With an audience comprised of "both kinds of blue hair... elderly matron here, arty punk there" (as the Boston Globe described it), So Percussion makes a rare and wonderful breed of music that both compels instantly and offers vast rewards for engaged listening. Edgy (at least in the sense that little other music sounds like this) and ancient (in that people have been hitting objects with sticks for eons), So Percussion is nothing if not itself.
TRISTAN PERICH
Born in 1982, Tristan Perich began formally composing at age 10. As a teen he attended Philips Academy, Andover, then went on to Columbia University where he received degrees in music, math and computer science. More recently, he received his master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts in 2007.
In all of his creative activities, Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order. Cantaloupe Music and Perich found one another when he attended the Bang on a Can Summer Institute in 2002.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music, combining his music with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. Early versions of the device were received with excitement by the international electronic music community and press, including BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News and Cool Hunting. Surface Magazine called the boxes "profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork
Members: Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, Lawson White
If there was a line, then So Percussion crossed it. They'd never been just another modern performance ensemble anyway. Following two acclaimed albums of rigorous music by modern master Steve Reich and even-more-modern masters David Lang and Evan Ziporyn, as well as ongoing collaborations with hepcat Bjork producers Matmos, the 20-something quartet has discovered a bold new voice: their own.
Called "astonishing and entrancing" by Billboard, "brilliant" by the New York Times, the discovery is perfectly appropriate. Coming together in the green pastures of New Haven at Yale's graduate program, So Percussion was created to give fresh voice to what co-founder Jason Treuting calls "funky contemporary music." Devoted to the conceptual dreamscapes of Reich, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, and others, So established a disciplined work ethic, learning pieces whole -- memorized and absorbed -- instead of merely read. A blind call to Bang on a Can founder David Lang yielded a commission. Called "a must-hear" by Billboard, their self-titled debut featured Lang's "the so-called laws of nature."
In 2004, realizing Steve Reich's nine-part "Drumming" as a quartet, they made one small step for music, one radical step for a percussion group: they overdubbed -- and to great success. Having explored the past, in the form of Reich's classics, and the present, in the form of Lang and Ziporyn's freshest, it was time for So to start exploring the future.
In that vein, their newest CD/DVD Amid the Noise began as an after-hours project. Eager to expand their palette, the members of So experimented with glockenspiel, toy piano, vibraphones, bowed marimba, melodica, tuned and prepared pipes, metals, a wayward ethernet port, and all kinds of sound programming. The resulting idiosyncratic tone explorations were synchronized to Jenise Treuting?s haunting films of street scenes in Manhattan and Tokyo.
"If you're sick of the sounds you've got, you go and find more," declares Sliwinski of the group's sonic philosophy. "There's always something to hit or rub or whatever." It is an approach they have taken with them to countless educational programs, ranging from teaching adolescents to masterclasses with student percussionists and composers at Juilliard, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Toronto, The Moscow Conservatory, and many other schools. It also has inspired them to commission dozens of composers to write for this most eclectic of instrumental groups. With the list spanning from such notables as David Lang and Paul Lansky to emerging talents Cenk Ergun, Dennis DeSantis and Suzanne Farrin, this unique repertoire has been heard at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and The Knitting Factory in New York, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and Montreal?s Le National, to name a few. In fact, So is one of the only outfits that can play at a major concert hall and with indie's hippest producers within 24 hours.
With an audience comprised of "both kinds of blue hair... elderly matron here, arty punk there" (as the Boston Globe described it), So Percussion makes a rare and wonderful breed of music that both compels instantly and offers vast rewards for engaged listening. Edgy (at least in the sense that little other music sounds like this) and ancient (in that people have been hitting objects with sticks for eons), So Percussion is nothing if not itself.
TRISTAN PERICH
Born in 1982, Tristan Perich began formally composing at age 10. As a teen he attended Philips Academy, Andover, then went on to Columbia University where he received degrees in music, math and computer science. More recently, he received his master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts in 2007.
In all of his creative activities, Perich is inspired by the aesthetics of math and physics, and works with simple forms and complex systems. The challenge of elegance provokes his compositions for solo instruments, small ensemble and orchestra. As a visual artist, he works primarily with machines to create pen-on-paper drawings that explore the limits of traditional drawing through randomness and order. Cantaloupe Music and Perich found one another when he attended the Bang on a Can Summer Institute in 2002.
In 2004 he began work on 1-Bit Music, combining his music with primitive, hand-programmed electronics that investigate the foundations of digital sound. Early versions of the device were received with excitement by the international electronic music community and press, including BPM Magazine, Res Magazine, Wired News and Cool Hunting. Surface Magazine called the boxes "profound throwbacks to the traditional album, a response to the intangibility of iTunes and mp3s in the form hand-held artwork