(le) poisson rouge

So is: Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting

Since 1999, So Percussion has been creating music that explores all the extremes of emotion and musical possibility. 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.

Excitement about composers like John Cage, Steve Reich, and Iannis Xenakis - as well as the sheer fun of playing together - inspired the members of So to begin performing together while students at the Yale School of Music. A blind call to David Lang, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and co-founder of New York’s Bang on a Can, yielded their first commissioned piece, the so-called laws of nature. So’s recording of the so-called laws of nature became the cornerstone of their self-titled debut album on Cantaloupe Music (the record label from the founders of Bang on a Can). In subsequent years, this relationship would blossom into a growing catalogue of exciting releases: Steve Reich’s masterpiece Drumming; So member Jason Treuting’s amid the noise; Treasure State, a collaboration with the electronic duo Matmos; and Paul Lansky’s Threads.

So's ongoing body of original work has resulted in exciting new projects such as the site-specific Music For Trains in Southern Vermont and Imaginary City, a fully-staged sonic meditation on urban soundscapes commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the Next Wave Festival 2009 in consortium with 5 other venues. So’s next theatrical project where (we) live is slated to premiere in Fall of 2012.

So Percussion is increasingly involved in mentoring young artists. Starting in the fall of 2011, its members will be Co-Directors of a new percussion department at the Bard College-Conservatory of Music. This top-flight undergraduate program enrolls each student in a double-degree (Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Arts) course in the Conservatory and Bard College, and exposes them to both traditional western conservatory training and a variety of world traditions. The summer of 2009 saw the creation of the annual So Percussion Summer Institute on the campus of Princeton University. The Institute is an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for college-age percussionists featuring the four members of So as faculty in rehearsal, performance, and discussion of contemporary music for students from around the world.

So Percussion has performed their unusual and exciting music all over the United States, with concerts at the Lincoln Center Festival, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Stanford Lively Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and many others. In addition, recent tours to the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Ukraine have brought them international acclaim.

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 rewards for engaged listening.

So would like to thank Pearl/Adams Instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth drumsticks, Remo drumheads, Black Swamp Accessories, and Estey organs for their sponsorship.

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Destroying walls between art-rock, avant-squonk, and mathed-out prog, Gutbucket's through-composed charts enter a place of pure sound. The decade-old New York quartet is not only equally comfortable playing in front of 900 sweatily pogo-ing teenage skate-punks, a crowd of cosmic indie-psych freaks, or on an anarchist German art collective houseboat, but most importantly, their music fits right in. Called “stomprovisors” by the Village Voice, the band has spent the past 10 years injecting a shot of glorious spazmitude into the minimalist cool of the New York downtown scene.

The group attacks their music with the ferocity usually reserved for punk, and the humorous abstraction of art-rock, despite having earned their jazz bona fides. Though the band might seem rooted in the genre exploding of New York’s downtown (their 2001 debut, InsomniacsDream, was released on the Knitting Factory house imprint), their shift to louder sounds began with their controversially titled Dry Humping the American Dream (released in 2003 in Europe on the legendary Enja label and domestically in 2004 on Bang on a Can's acclaimed Cantaloupe label).

NEWSPEAK is an eight-piece amplified ensemble working under the direction of composer David T. Little and clarinetist Eileen Mack. Named after the though-limiting language in George Orwell’s 1984, Newspeak explores the grey area where art and politics mix. Through their programming, performances, and commissions, they seek to reconsider, redefine, and ultimately reclaim the notion of socially engaged music and its place in contemporary society. Embedding elements of a rock band into a classical new music ensemble, Newspeak confronts the boundaries between the classical and the rock traditions.

Newspeak is utterly committed to the music of living composers; to commissioning, work-shopping, developing and performing new works, and to encouraging composers to find their own voice in engaging with musical and social issues. Since 2004, they have commissioned and premiered more than thirty works, each engaging differently with the problem of the political in music, and primarily from American composers. They have proudly shared bills with such diverse groups as The Fiery Furnaces, Anti-Social Music, Pit Er Pat, Electric Kompany, STATS, Time of Orchids, The Motion Sick, Massey, NOW Ensemble, So Percussion, ACME, and Corey Dargel. They are currently preparing to record their first studio album for New Amsterdam Records.

Hailed as “a deft young group gaining attention” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) and "a smart young chamber group that straddles a line between contemporary classical music and indie rock," (John Schaefer, WNYC), NOW Ensemble is a collection of performers and composers dedicated to making new chamber music for the 21st century. With a unique instrumentation of flute (Alex Sopp/Andrew Rehrig), clarinet (Sara Budde), electric guitar (Mark Dancigers), double bass (Logan Coale), and piano (Michael Mizrahi), NOW Ensemble brings a fresh sound and a new perspective to the classical tradition, infused with a blend of musical influences that reflects the diverse backgrounds and listening experiences of their members. NOW has premiered over 50 works, including those by composer-members Patrick Burke, Mark Dancigers, and Judd Greenstein, along with many more by a cross-section of the top young voices in contemporary composition, such as Ryan Brown, David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, and dozens more. NOW Ensemble has performed at a wide variety of venues, such as the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Festival Internacional de Chihuahua, Pittsburgh's Music on the Edge, the Carlsbad Music Festival, Sarasota's New Music New College, Wordless Music, and Look & Listen; in New York, they can regularly be heard at diverse venues such as Le Poisson Rouge, Joe's Pub, Galapagos Art Space and the Chelsea Art Museum, as well as on WNYC radio. Their first album, NOW, was released in 2008 to rave reviews around the country, including on AllMusic.com (five stars): "a first-class debut...more of this is demanded, not requested." Newsweek's Seth Colter Walls wrote, "NOW... imports a catchy inflection to classical forms... Striking a balance between the old and the new has rarely sounded this good.”Their self-titled debut album is available now through New Amsterdam Records.

Listen: NOW, "Folk Music"


Listen: NOW, "How About Now"