Percussionist Colin Currie initially created the group that carries his identify particularly to play Steve Reich’s early percussion-based works, nevertheless it has steadily prolonged its repertoire nicely past the music of the good American minimalist. So, whereas their newest live performance did embody works by Reich, it additionally featured items by Julia Wolfe and Rolf Wallin, and ended with the UK premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s New England Études, for percussion sextet.
The six quick actions of Turnage’s piece had been first carried out in Boston final yr. They name for a variety of pitched and unpitched devices, alternating between music during which the main target is on the interaction of rhythmically characterised concepts, and actions during which the curiosity is predominantly melodic, whether or not quietly lyrical or stompingly energetic. The fifth is entitled Bells for Ukraine and conjures a consoling, hymn-like melody from marimbas and vibraphones, rising out of a chiming halo of gongs and bells. Alongside the opposite works within the programme, the sequence appeared strikingly diverse and vividly colored. Currie carried out the premiere; elsewhere he was very a lot one of many performers.
Actually in the remainder of the programme the emphasis was on music during which course of issues most. Reich’s two works set the tone: in Music for Items of Wooden, pairs of claves arrange the steadily shifting patterns, whereas within the first part of his epic Drumming, 4 pairs of tuned bongos, performed with sticks, conjure the intricate textures. It’s music that is determined by immaculate precision, and like every thing within the programme each items had been performed with nearly informal virtuosity by Currie and his colleagues. Wallin’s Twine was a dialogue between xylophone and marimba, the 2 devices both alternating swirling concepts, or coming collectively to create intricate filigree, whereas Wolfe’s Darkish Full Trip knitted 4 drum kits right into a welter of cross-rhythms, typically led by cymbals, typically by the assortment of drums. Noisy, however curiously compelling.
, works by Julia Wolfe, Steve Reich and Rolf Wallin were played with immaculate precision){kind=link}