Percussion Ensemble

Percussion music exists at the periphery of the Western art music tradition, and as such has long been a kind of terra incognita.  In searching for new sounds and new ways of constructing music, composers have turned to percussion as a path into this unknown, a starting point for exploring diverse worlds.  At the same time, percussion instruments are integral to the music of many different world cultures, and composers have for centuries introduced these instruments, sounds, and approaches to music through percussionists who, being fundamentally non-specialists, are always eager to adopt them.  All of the music on this program seems to be in some fundamental way engaged in the process of mapping, or re-mapping the world.  In these pieces new worlds are explored, sounds from far-flung places are either meticulously or casually thrown together, and composers seek to create a new but coherent order from chaos.  They create novel and geographically implausible boundaries or simply set out into the unknown.  They construct musical logic while inverting conventional priorities, and invent new systems of notation to chart it.  Percussion is not revolution as some have claimed (that term is reserved for electric guitars and blue jeans in the last century, and who knows what in the new one), but it is often a precursor.  Percussion instruments seem to resonate with those very low and distant vibrations before the culture at large perceives them, incorporating sounds and ideas that are still only at the margins of consciousness.

Matthew Gold, director

Works by Mark Mothersbaugh, John Cage, Dave Hollinden, William Duckworth, Henry Cowell, Evan Hause, Wolfgang Rihm, Claude Debussy and George Crumb.

Student soloists:

Christina Lee '08, percussion

Meghan Ramsey '08, flute

Brian Simalchik '10, string piano