Third Coast Percussion: MLK Center Family Concert Friday, July 9, 2021 | 4:15 PM Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center

Third Coast Percussion David Skidmore Robert Dillon Peter Martin Sean Connors

Thank you to our generous concert sponsors: James Van Winkle and Betsy Blair with additional support provided by BankNewport and NewportFed Charitable Foundation ------

IVAN TREVIÑO 2 + 1 DEVONTÉ HYNES "Press" from For All Its Fury (arr. by TCP) JLIN Derivative, Duality DAVID SKIDMORE Ritual Music and Torched and Wrecked STEVE REICH Music for Pieces of Wood

This program will conclude at approximately 5:15 PM.

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Today’s concert showcases the fun, beauty, and flexibility of percussion, and the important role that percussionists have played in creating the music they play. Much of the music for the modern percussion ensemble has been composed by prominent percussion performers and educators, such as Ivan Treviño, Andrea Venet, and Third Coast Percussion ensemble member David Skidmore. These percussionist-composers draw from their own experiences playing in drum lines, rock bands, and percussion ensembles to create exciting new sounds.

Steve Reich, while known primarily as a composer, also began his career as a percussionist. Like many of his works, Music for Pieces of Wood is built on a fascination with rhythm. Reich’s pattern-based and highly repetitive music has been a pillar of the modern percussion repertoire for decades, and Third Coast Percussion won a Grammy award in 2017 for its recording of Reich’s music.

Percussion instruments appear in nearly all musical styles and traditions, and Third Coast Percussion has found exciting musical possibilities by pairing with musicians from many genres and backgrounds. Devonté Hynes works in the pop music world under the name “Blood Orange,” but he grew up playing cello, and maintains a fascination with classical music. Electronic music producer Jlin has formed her own unique voice writing music that she labels as “clean, precise, and unpredictable.” Third Coast Percussion collaborated with both of these musical innovators by asking them to create music on their computers as they ordinarily might, then handing off the recordings to TCP to orchestrate for their percussion instruments. The results are fun, beautiful, and unlike anything that these musicians or Third Coast Percussion would have created on their own.

MUSICIAN BIOS

THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Third Coast Percussion is a Grammy Award-winning -based percussion quartet. For fifteen years, the ensemble has created exciting and unexpected performances that constantly redefine the classical music experience. The ensemble has been praised for “commandingly elegant” (New York Times) performances, the “rare power” (Washington Post) of their recordings, and “an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity” (Minnesota Star-Tribune). Third Coast Percussion maintains a busy tour schedule, with past performances in 35 of the 50 states and Washington, DC, plus international tour dates across four continents.

Through extensive workshopping and close contact with composers, Third Coast Percussion has commissioned and premiered new works by Philip Glass, Clarice Assad, Devonté Hynes, Jlin, Tyondai Braxton, Danny Elfman, , Donnacha Dennehy, Glenn Kotche, , Georg Friedrich Haas, David T. Little and today’s leading up-and-coming composers through their Currents Creative Partnership program. TCP’s commissioned works have become part of the ensemble’s core repertoire and seen hundreds of performances around the world.

Third Coast Percussion has recorded iconic percussion works by John Cage and Steve Reich, and first recordings of commissioned works by Philip Glass, Augusta Read Thomas, Devonté Hynes, Gavin Bryars, Donnacha Dennehy, David T. Little, , and more, in addition to the ensemble’s own compositions. In 2017 the ensemble won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Steve Reich’s works for percussion. In 2020 Third Coast received its second nomination in the same category for Perpetulum, and in 2021 they received their third nomination for Fields, with music by Devonté Hynes.