2008 Lab Artist

So Percussion

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

Vermont Performance Lab, in partnership with the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, the Brattleboro Music Center and the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project, has commissioned So Percussion to create an original site-specific work entitled "Music for Trains." The piece will be created in Southern Vermont and will premiere on August 8 and 9, 2008 on the train and in the train depots Brattleboro and Bellows Falls. (visit www.musicfortrains.com for tickets)

So Percussion is a percussion ensemble known for their innovative work with new music masters including Steve Reich, David Lang and Evan Ziporyn of Bang on a Can and Fred Frith among others. They perform a unique repertoire that ranges from edgy to ancient.

Called "astonishing and entrancing" by Billboard, "brilliant" by the New York Times, the discovery is perfectly appropriate. So Percussion was created to give fresh voice to what co-founder Jason Treuting calls "funky contemporary music." 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 electronic gurus Matmos, the 20-something quartet has discovered a bold new voice: their own.

"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 and 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 artists 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 for eons), perhaps it doesn’t need to be called anything at all.