Third Coast Percussion - 21/09/19 - St Lukes, Old Street

In amongst everything else, I sometimes go to classical music concerts, especially ones that involve hitting things. This comes out of listening to Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead, where percussion is a major part of the sound, and then through their influences and on until I ended up one day at New Yorks Carnegie Hall watching the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra perform Edgar Varèse’s ‘Amériques’. This is classical music with too many percussionists and a siren - my mind was blown. Since then I’ve become a bit of a fan of Philip Glass, and thus ended up at this gig.

Third Coast Percussion is quartet from Chicago, having met at university 15 years ago. Since then they’ve performed all over America, and occasionally in Europe. This was their London debut and they brought a couple of new Philip Glass pieces they’d commissioned.

St Lukes is a place I’d not been to before. A converted church on Old Street, it’s owned by the London Symphony Orchestra who use it as a rehearsal space. It holds about 380 people and has very nice acoustics. It also has the biggest café to audience ratio I think I’ve ever seen at a venue.

The audience ranged from people in suits on a Saturday night in town to a bloke in tie-dyed t-shirt (that would be me). Naturally, my second-row seat was behind the tallest person in the room.

Having been disappointed by the Sisters of Mercy, the night before, this was much more interesting. In front of us was a giant Meccano set of percussion instruments. Xylophones, vibraphones (?), marimbas (?), cowbells, gongs, and all sorts of random hittable objects. There was even a single solitary drum. It was as though they’d raided a museum display but not bothered bringing the labels, so I have no idea what most of the instruments were. Luckily the group seemed to know what they were doing, and wandered between clumps of instruments without missing their cues.

First off was one of the Philip Glass pieces - ‘Madeira River’ was about as un-Philip Glass as I’ve ever heard. Rather than the circling minimalism you’d expect, this is far more fluid and meandering; a bit like the ‘drums’ section at a Grateful Dead gig. I was struck by the very different characters of the players. The guy with the beard was smiling all the time and seemed very laid back. The guy in jacket and tie was glaring intensely ahead - I thought at the bloke opposite, but then realised he was reading the music and occasionally scowling as if he’d missed a bit. The guy in jacket and no tie attacked his instruments and finally the curly haired guy (no jacket or tie) just seemed very zen about the whole thing.

Next up was some Steve Reich - set up a rhythmic scheme and repeat with slight variations for fifteen minutes. At one point the quartet were all huddled around the one marimba, which is good for the audience as you’re waiting for the slapstick moment of them hitting each other.

The second Philip Glass piece,’Perpetulum’ off the new album started a bit more minimalist and drove along nicely. There was some very nice gong work and all sorts of random noises that again weren’t what you expect from Philip Glass.

The weirdest piece was ‘Perfectly Voiceless’, a collaboration with Devonté Hynes, AKA Lightspeed Champion (I’ve not heard of them either). It wandered all over the place, and got quite menacing at times.

The instruments for part two - there were twice as many in the first half but I didn't get a photo

After the break things settled down a bit. ‘The Other Side of The River’ is bit dull, and at 20 minutes goes on way too long. They finished with a couple of pieces by one of the quartet that were good but lacked the oomph of the first half. Maybe it’s a thing with classical music that you start with the big numbers, but I’d have saved ‘Perpetulum’ for the big finish.

Videos

None from the night itself, but here's a couple of the things they played...

Madeira River - Philip Glass

Torched and Wrecked - David Skidmore