Grammy®-Winning THIRD COAST PERCUSSION Make Segerstrom Center Debut, 4/5

The evening also includes three original works by Third Coast Percussion members, “Niagara” from the
quartet’s most recent album Paddle to the Sea, as well as works by Grammy® Award winner Augusta Read
Thomas, New Zealand composer Gemma Peacocke, British singer-songwriter Devonté Hynes and American
composer Mark Applebaum. Third Coast Percussion members include Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter
Martin and David Skidmore. Composer, musicologist, and author Dr. Byron Adams will provide a
fascinating and informative talk prior to the performance starting at 7:15 p.m.

Single tickets start at $39 and are now available online at www.SCFTA.org, at the Box Office at 600 Town
Center Drive in Costa Mesa or by calling (714) 556-2787. For inquiries about group ticket savings of 10 or
more, please call the Group Services office at (714) 755-0236.

Perpetulum is a co-commission by Center Chamber Music patrons Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting.
Segerstrom Center for the Arts applauds the Colburn Foundation for its support of the Chamber Music Series
and its corporate partners including Kia Motors America, Official Automotive Partner; United Airlines, Official
Airline.

Program Notes
Third Coast Percussion: “Niagara” from Paddle to the Sea
As part of a multi-media performance project, Third Coast Percussion composed music to perform live with
the 1966 film Paddle to the Sea, based on a children’s book of the same name written in 1941. The film tells
the story of a small wooden figure in a canoe, lovingly carved by a Native Canadian boy and set on a long
journey through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, out to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. The
people who find “Paddle” along the way must choose, rather than keeping him for themselves, to send him
further along the waterways, perhaps with a fresh coat of paint or a new rudder. Paddle also encounters
danger in his journey, as in this passage, when he goes over Niagara Falls. Third Coast Percussion’s album
Paddle to the Sea, featuring this music, as well as water-themed works that inspired this composition, was
released on Cedille Records in February 2018. Duration: 4 minutes

Peter Martin (Third Coast Percussionist): BEND
Peter Martin’s quartet BEND draws inspiration from the player piano compositions of Bruce Goff, a
wonderfully unconventional architect, and amateur composer. Many of Goff’s piano rolls were highly stylized
geometric designs perforated into the scrolls, resulting in music that created very clear sonic “shapes.”
Whereas these shapes would create the pitch and rhythm in a player piano performance, BEND translates
these shapes into volume, tone, and gesture. The composer’s experience with the piano rolls – through a
blurry, decades-old video – inspired an unconventional sound palette created with alternative techniques on
2 marimbas. Duration: 8 minutes

Augusta Read Thomas: Resounding Earth, Mvt II. Prayer
Resounding Earth is scored for four percussionists playing bells (and bell-like instruments) from a wide
variety of cultures and historical periods. The piece was conceived as a cultural statement celebrating
interdependence and commonality across all cultures; and as a musical statement celebrating the
extraordinary beauty and diversity of expression inherent in bell sounds. Bells can be used to celebrate
grand occasions, hold sacrificial rites, keep a record of events, give the correct time, celebrate births and
weddings, mark funerals, caution a community, enhance any number of religious ceremonies and are even
hung around the necks of animals. Duration: 9 minutes.

Gemma Peacocke: Death Wish
New Zealand composer Gemma Peacocke’s music works in both acoustic and electronic sound worlds. Her
piece Death Wish was inspired by a short film featuring New Zealand survivors of sexual assault. Peacocke
writes: “One of the survivors, Hinewirangi Kohu-Morgan, spoke about the out-of-control spiraling of her life
for many years and how she developed what she called a ‘death wish.’ In the piece, I thought about the
spooling and unspooling of energy and how we are all bound and driven by forces both within and beyond
ourselves.” Duration 10 minutes.

Devonté Hynes: Perfectly Voiceless
Devonté Hynes composed the music for an entire evening-length program featuring Third Coast Percussion
and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, with new choreography created by Emma Portner, Jon Boogz, and Lil
Buck, which premiered in Chicago in September 2018. To create this 75-minute opus, Hynes composed
music with synthesized and sampled sounds, which he then sent to Third Coast Percussion. TCP
experimented with instruments to create a live performance version of the music, which they then recorded
and sent back to Hynes for feedback, then eventually to the choreographers to create the dance. Perfectly
Voiceless is a section of that program which served as a musical interlude between choreographed pieces.
Duration: 11 minutes.

Mark Applebaum: Aphasia
Aphasia is a work for solo vocalist, notable as the composer says, “for its absence of live singing.” Instead,
this work (which has gained great popularity among percussionists) consists of a recording of transformed
voice samples from baritone Nicholas Isherwood and a series of specifically-prescribed physical gestures to
be performed live. These gestures include familiar everyday motions such as turning a key, eating a
sandwich, or buckling a seatbelt, and are synchronized with the samples, but unrelated in meaning. Duration:
9 minutes

Robert Dillon (Third Coast Percussionist): Ordering-instincts
Ordering-instincts draws a big sound from a very compact setup of instruments. The four percussionists
share eight wooden planks, an octave of loose crotales and two tom-toms, from which they create a variety
of different sonic colors in tightly interwoven rhythms. All musical content arises from the composite of all the
players together; no one player’s part forms a complete voice by itself. Duration: 8 minutes.

Philip Glass: Perpetulum
Although percussion instruments have played an important role in much of Philip Glass’s music, and a
number of his works have been arranged for percussion by other musicians, Glass has never composed a
work for percussion ensemble until Third Coast Percussion commissioned Perpetulum. Glass is now 81
years old, but when composing this work, he harkened back to childhood memories of his first experience
with percussion instruments. Though Glass’s primary musical instrument was the flute, he had the
opportunity to participate in a percussion class while a student at the Preparatory Division of the Peabody
Conservatory in his hometown of Baltimore. Perpetulum blends an almost child-like exploration of the sounds
of percussion with Glass’s signature musical voice. The work is in three sections, with a cadenza between
the second and third section. Glass proposes some general concepts and instruments for the cadenza but
leaves it to the performers to compose this segment of the music themselves. Duration: 22 minutes

David Skidmore (Third Coast Percussionist): Torched and Wrecked
Torched and Wrecked comes from Skidmore’s cycle of works entitled “Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities,” all
of which explore the idea that the same piece of music can move at several different speeds at the same
time. An electronic audio track—Skidmore’s most intensive work with electronic composition to date—
expands and reinforces the live percussion, and video artist Xuan was commissioned to create
accompanying video. Like many of these pieces in this cycle, Torched and Wrecked takes its cryptic name
from a memorable Third Coast Percussion touring experience. Duration: 5 minutes

Third Coast Percussion is a Grammy®-winning, artist-run quartet of classically-trained percussionists
hailing from the great city of Chicago. For over ten years, the ensemble has forged a unique path in the
musical landscape with virtuosic, energetic performances that celebrate the extraordinary depth and breadth
of musical possibilities in the world of percussion. The ensemble has been praised for “commandingly
elegant” (The New York Times) performances, the “rare power” (The Washington Post) of their recordings,
and “an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity” (Minnesota Star-Tribune). The four members of Third Coast
are also accomplished teachers, and since 2012, have served as ensemble-in-residence at the University of
Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

A direct connection with the audience is at the core of all of Third Coast Percussion’s work, whether the
musicians are speaking from the stage about a new piece of music, inviting the audience to play along in a
concert or educational performance, or inviting their fans around the world to create new music using one of
their free mobile apps.

Third Coast Percussion maintains a busy touring schedule, with past performances in 32 of the 50 states
plus Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, and venues ranging from concert halls at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and De Doelen to clubs and alternative performance spaces such as New York’s
Le Poisson Rouge and the National Gallery’s West Garden Court.

The quartet’s curiosity and eclectic taste have led to a series of unlikely collaborations that have produced
exciting new art. The ensemble has worked with engineers at the University of Notre Dame, architects at the
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, dancers at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and musicians from traditions
ranging from the mbira music of Zimbabwe’s Shona people, to indie rockers, to some of the world’s leading
concert musicians.

A commission for a new work from composer Augusta Read Thomas in 2012 led to the realization that
commissioning new musical works can be – and should be – as collaborative as any other artistic
partnership. Through extensive workshopping and close contact with composers, Third Coast Percussion
has commissioned and premiered new works from Donnacha Dennehy, Glenn Kotche, Lei Liang, Gavin
Bryars, Christopher Cerrone, Timo Andres, Marcos Balter, Ted Hearne, and today’s leading up-and-coming
composers through their Emerging Composers Partnership Program. These works have become part of the
ensemble’s core repertoire and seen hundreds of performances across North America and throughout
Europe.

Third Coast Percussion has always maintained strong ties to the vibrant artistic community in their hometown
of Chicago. They have collaborated with Chicago institutions such as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and
the Adler Planetarium, performed at the grand opening of Maggie Daley Children’s Park, conducted
residencies at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago,
created multi-year collaborative projects with Chicago-based composers Augusta Read Thomas, Glenn
Kotche, and chamber ensemble Eighth Blackbird, and taught tens of thousands of students through
partnerships with Urban Gateways, the People’s Music School, the Chicago Park District, Rush Hour
Concerts, and others.

The four members of Third Coast Percussion met while studying percussion music at Northwestern
University. Members of Third Coast also hold degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Rutgers
University, the New England Conservatory, and the Yale School of Music.
Third Coast Percussion performs exclusively with Pearl/Adams Musical Instruments, Zildjian Cymbals, Remo
Drumheads, and Vic Firth Sticks and mallets.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts is an acclaimed arts institution as well as a beautiful multi-disciplinary
cultural campus. It is committed to supporting artistic excellence, offering unsurpassed experiences and to
engaging the entire community in new and exciting ways through the unique power of live performance and a
diverse array of inspiring arts-based education and community engagement programs.
Previously called the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Center is Orange County’s largest
non-profit arts organization. In addition to its six performance venues, Segerstrom Center is also home to the
American Ballet Theatre William J. Gillespie School.

In addition to Segerstrom Center for the Arts as a presenting and producing institution, it also identifies the
beautiful 14-acre campus that embraces the Center’s own facilities as well as two independently acclaimed
organizations: Tony Award®-winning South Coast Repertory and a site designated as the future home of
the Orange County Museum of Art.

Photo Credit: SCFTA.org