“Who Turns Out the Light”: Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion featuring Ringdown

Music from Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion’s Grammy-nominated album Rectangles and Circumstance, as well as their first album Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part. 

“this performance’s quietly quirky stagecraft — conceived by Mark DeChiazza — made it as interesting to watch as to listen to. The troupe and their arsenal are the perfect companions for the bold genre-adventuring singer-composer-violinist Caroline Shaw…”

• The Times of London

Explore distinctive rhythms of breath art

Grammy winners Sō Percussion join forces with Shodekeh Talifero to explore distinctive rhythms with breath art, vocal percussion, beatboxing, and physical percussion in Vodalities, a collaboration dedicated to three towering vocalists: Bobby McFerrin, Ella Fitzgerald, and Doug E. Fresh, the Original Human Beatbox.

“We love making music with Sho’! Texas won’t know what hit ’em….”
Sō Percussion

From the venue:

Sō Percussion and Caroline Shaw’s latest collaboration is Rectangles and Circumstance, the “hypnotically beautiful” (BBC Radio 3) new album from Nonesuch Records. The current tour of the album is augmented by songs from their previous collaborative work Let the Soil Play its Simple Part as well as an interlude from Caroline’s cinematic pop duo Ringdown, featuring co-songwriter and partner Danni Lee, plus recent compositions for Sō by members Jason Treuting and Eric Cha-Beach. The evening-length performance is a band-generated theatrical experience, featuring staging and design by director Mark DeChiazza. The musicians gradually place lights and reveal novel instruments as the show builds from a lone spotlight on Shaw singing “I’ll Fly Away” to the ecstatic full ensemble performing thrilling up-tempo songs like “Sing On” and “To the Sky,” as films by Sō Percussion member Jason Treuting splash across canvases throughout the stage. This production melds DIY design with dazzling original songs, to sensational effect.

from the venue:

For 20 years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (New Yorker). For their ArtPower debut, they are joined by Ringdown, an “ecstatically blissful” (Night After Night) and “irresistible” (Feast of Music) cinematic electro-pop duo featuring composer-musicians Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan. They create music that floats up from the dusty record bin between Brahms and Brandi Carlile, and centers around joy, human connection, and trying to inspire people to feel more love.

Dubbed a ‘visionary’ by the San Diego Troubadour, Gloria Yehilevsky is a London-based composer, percussionist, and researcher championing transdisciplinary and collaborative music.

Works by Nathalie Joachim, Pamela Madsen, Jason Treuting, Olivier Tarpaga and Pauline Oliveros.

Back to Jason’s alma mater for an exciting show in the middle of beautiful Rochester winter! Bring ear muffs…

“This ambitious suite from the saxophonist and composer Charlotte Greve contains guitar parts that might appeal to fans of jazz musician Nels Cline. And its choral writing should excite devotees of Roomful of Teeth. Yet it’s the effortless feel of Greve’s fusion that feels most notable — and capable of creating new audiences of its own.”

— New York Times, The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2021

America’s percussion superstars return to the Gardner Museum for the first time in over a decade, joined by a coterie of friends to perform Eastman’s joyful minimalist anthem, Stay On It. Julia Wolfe’s contemplative Forbidden Love finds Sō performing on the instruments of a string quartet, but in novel ways: “everything you aren’t supposed to do to stringed instruments,” in the words of the composer.

Photo Credit: Anja Schutz

Works (In Order of Composition

Julius Eastman: Stay on It (1973)
Julia Wolfe: Forbidden Love (2019)

You cannot possibly describe how super-cool is this collective of Sōper Friends Tropos. They’ve got a new record and the improv chops of forty lumberjacks. Just a $10 donation – and the night is yours for the taking! I mean just look at these kool kats!

WHO TURNS OUT THE LIGHT
Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion
featuring Ringdown
Directed by Mark DeChiazza

7:30
Performance
BAM Fisher Stage

After
Cocktails, Canapés and Concert
BAM Fisher 4th Floor

Tickets:  $500*

From BAM:  Globally celebrated for peerless virtuosity and unbounded curiosity, Grammy-winning new-music powerhouse quartet Sō Percussion has thrilled BAM audiences alongside composer Steve Reich, and in their own genre-mashing triumphs Where (we) Live, Imaginary City, and A Gun Show. For this intimate eight-concert residency, the pulse is unstoppable as these hometown heroes weave together classical and pop music styles into something new, original, and inviting.

Week one brings Sō together with Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw to perform a staged work of selections from their two most recent acclaimed collaborations, Rectangles and Circumstance and Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part. The show also features Ringdown, Shaw brilliant art-pop duo with partner Dannie Lee. The evening-length show is called Who Turns Out the Light, a theatrical creation staged by visionary director and filmmaker Mark DeChiazza.

Then during week two, Sō welcomes genre-bursting innovators This Is the Kit (Kate Stables) and Helado Negro (Roberto Carlos Lange) for four evenings of unpredictable musical fusion. Look for reworked songs from each composer’s beloved catalog and brand-new collaborations bursting with sonic invention and rhythmic joy.

It’s not just a concert series—it’s a sonic revolution in eight acts.

Efraín Rozas is a Peruvian interdisciplinary artist, researcher and robotics maker. His work was described as “an incredible physical presence that transformed the stage into a soundscape” by The New York Times, “a heady confluence of technology, culture and cognition” by The New Yorker, and “a deep psychonautic dive” by Wire Magazine. He is a Jerome Artist Fellow 2023-2025 for combined arts. He was a resident at The Kitchen on 2021. He has performed at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Museum of Contemporary art of Lima and Central Park Summerstage Fania Records 50th anniversary. His experimental salsa album Roza Cruz was named one of the best Latin American albums of the decade by Zona Sucia and Estereofonía.

Rozas will perform percussion interacting with a light/percussive robotic sculpture which generates rhythmic patterns in real time with algorithms created on Max MSP. Special guests Michael Liu, Karl Lee, James Hyun and Xiaopeng Ma who will perform 2 pieces by Rozas.

From Cenk:

– MAY 23: I am in a band with two of my favorite humans, JEFF SNYDER & JASON TREUTING. The band is called DEM and comprises Jeff & I on electronics, & Jason on drums. On this evening we will be celebrating our new album ABSOLUTELY. Each track on this album features a vocalist we admire. One of them, the inimitable CHARMAINE LEE will be joining us for a solo set, and for a special performance together with DEM.

You can check out the album here and please consider supporting it on this beautiful Bandcamp Friday.
The album release show is presented by SO LABORATORIES ~ 20 GRAND AVENUE #205 BROOKLYN NY 7:30 PM

Other Faces is a multimedia electroacoustic trio creating radiant, bold, and expansive work fusing visual and sonic textures. The trio, composed of Adam Lutz, Dan Langa, and Kristian de Leon, has built their collaboration on a process parallel to folk traditions of aural transmission and embracing the fusion of disparate subject matter or production techniques. Other Faces is currently a Sō Percussion Studio Residency Partner for 2024-2025.

Zachary Mezzo kicks things off! Gonna be a great night of experimental mad science.

from Caramoor:
WHO TURNS OUT THE LIGHT is a very special evening-length staged performance of some of the most dynamic, ecstatic, and just plain gorgeous music being made anywhere by anyone. Built around the current tour of their “hypnotically beautiful” (BBC Radio 3) new album Rectangles and Circumstance, this performance will be augmented by songs from their previous collaborative work Let the Soil Play its Simple Part, as well as an interlude from Caroline’s cinematic pop duo Ringdown. Recent compositions by Sō members round out this band-generated theatrical experience.

Includes songs from Rectangles and Circumstance (2024) and Let the Soil Play its Simple Part (2021)

by Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion
Staging and Design by Mark DeChiazza

8:15pm / Post-concert conversation with the artists

We are thrilled to announce the 17th annual Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an all-out extravaganza with special guests Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, Angélica Negrón, Ayano Kataoka and Clara Warnaar

Usually we’re too busy with SōSI to make it to the coolest new music festival of the summer. But in this, our 25th year, we had to get there! We’ll be performing four different shows, including Steve Reich’s landmark Drumming. Be there!