The four members of Third Coast Percussion have resorted to Dumpster diving. Mallet-slingers Owen Clayton Condon, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore aren’t freegans or recent victims of the recession. They’re merely on a quest to find new sources of percussive possibility, some of which can be had only in an alley.
For its much buzzed-about season finale, “Descent,” the quartet needed to fabricate what percussionists refer to as “Mahler boxes” and a “Mahler hammer,” made famous by the composer’s 6th Symphony in which men in formal wear do Thor impersonations with giant bludgeons on massive wood containers. As the concert’s centerpiece, Wolfgang Rihm’s “Tutuguri VI” requires two such monstrosities. Skidmore tells us the Third Coast members saved Streets & Sans a bit of trouble when they stumbled upon an abandoned desk. “We put it in the back of Clay’s car and took it to the studio,” he excitedly explains. “Lo and behold, you hit it with a sledgehammer and it makes an incredible sound.”
Given the inevitable audience awe at Rihm’s colossus—for its arresting grandiosity and intoxicating subject matter—the lack of familiarity with the work among American audiences, and even percussionists, is perplexing. Excerpted from the 58-year-old German composer’s larger “Tutuguri: Poeme Danse” for speaker, chorus and orchestra, “Tutuguri VI” is based on the experiential writings of playwright Antonin Artaud. In 1936, the Frenchman traveled to Mexico to exorcise personal demons brought on by heroin addiction. While South of the Border, Artaud witnessed an event that would haunt him for the rest of his days: a peyote-induced ritual of the Tarahumara shamans of northern Mexico. Obsessed with the enigmatic ceremony, the mercurial writer penned the poem “Tutuguri” as his final attempt to reconcile a troubled mind that would take him through a series of psychiatric institutions until his death in 1948.
As to why Rihm’s 1982 score is largely absent from U.S. concert programs, Lincoln Square resident Dillon thinks the reason may be logistical: “There’s the factor of the massive array of instruments it makes use of, including 18 tom-toms, six concert bass drums, six pairs of crash cymbals and two giant hammers.” The 30-year-old Chicago Symphony sub also points to logistics as perhaps one reason his group is the only percussion ensemble in the country to present a full concert season: “Collecting instruments is a challenge!” Endorsement deals with Vic Firth and Pearl have helped round out the foursome’s impressive inventory of instruments. Not to mention the classical community’s general reluctance to jump inside garbage bins.
Third Coast’s array of toms, tams, conch shells, flower pots, skins, sticks and even a rewired Speak & Spell (all kept in an industrial building in the Irving Park area) can draw new ears to contemporary classical music with an approachability any new-music ensemble would envy. “The variety of sounds, colors, instruments and the gestural aspects of [our] performances are a unique attraction to uninitiated audiences,” says Martin, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Plus, there’s just a visceral thrill in watching people beat on things.
As its name suggests, “Descent” gets progressively heavier. Third Coast opens with member Skidmore’s inviting “Fanfare for a New Audience” and moves into two commissions by Otto Mueller and Marcos Balter, the director of Columbia College’s music composition program who describes his “Dark Rooms” to us as “a very climax-oriented work.” At the end of the program awaits the kraken, “Tutuguri VI.” Given that the gentlemen of Third Coast have been using phrases like “volume threshold” to describe the piece, audience members might want to wear goggles. Lumber might be splintered. And there’s no telling where it’s been.
- Doyle Armbrust
published in Time Out Chicago on April 28th, 2010