Fall Announcements: Cincinnati Symphony, Carnegie Hall, and More!
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Dear Friends,
September is here, can you believe it? We are thrilled to share news of upcoming concerts – with the Cincinnati Symphony and Bryce Dessner, with Caroline Shaw, at Carnegie Hall, later this month at Princeton, and elsewhere – new recordings, new commissions from Nathalie Joachim, Shodekeh Talifero, and others.
Read on, and join us!
P R I N C E T O N
C I N C I N N A T I S Y M P H O N Y
Then on Sept 25 we join the CSO and Louis Langrée for David Lang’s man made (the performance will be recorded for commercial release — stay tuned for more info!) and Lully’s Suite from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.
Learn more (including info about the Cincinnati Symphony’s fantastic safety regulations) and buy tickets here.
The music on this program encompasses a range of recent collaborations; we offer the world premiere of Nathalie Joachim‘s Note to Self, a co-commission from Carnegie Hall and Sō through the Andrew W. Siegel Fellowship; it’s the first work Nathalie has written for percussion, and it is AWESOME.
We also offer the latest installation of Shodekeh Talifero‘s Vodalities: Paradigms of Consciousnness for the Human Voice. This piece, which Shodekeh will perform with us, is supported by our Flexible Commissions initiative (read more about this project below).
We also revisit Caroline Shaw‘s gorgeous Narrow Sea, with the inimitable Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, and wind up with a joyous ensemble version of Jason Treuting‘s Amid the Noise, a work which is a kind of seed crystal of artistic development for Sō throughout the years.
To be onstage at Carnegie Hall is always a dazzling honor, and to share this music with a live audience in 2021 is a privilege that nearly overwhelms us.
We cannot wait to share this music with you, and we are happy to say that single tickets are now on sale. Get them here.
A L B U M S
This Fall, we release our second Sō Percussion Editions album, featuring new and recent works by Darian Donovan Thomas. The album includes two performances (by the Bergamot Quartet, and by Sō) of Individuate, a work commissioned through the Sō Flexible Commissions initiative. Also on the album is Stephon Clark, and Kid Gunner Brother, performed by Troika Percussion.
This release follows a year of major new Sō recordings; we began 2021 with Caroline Shaw’s Narrow Seafrom Nonesuch Records, and our joint project with Buke and Gase, A Record Of… Then in May we released our first album from Sō Percussion Editions: a performance of Julius Eastman’s epic Stay On It.
This summer, we welcomed Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, created and performed by our “band” with Caroline Shaw. We are so deeply proud of this project, and are delighted to say that in November we’ll be touring the songs with Caroline – stay tuned for cities and dates!
“[Let the Soil Play its Simple Part] with Sō Percussion is every bit as vivid and colourful as the acclaimed Narrow Sea released earlier this year… it is also an experiment in deep collaboration…The result is a glorious, genre-defying disc by turns poignant, celebratory, complex and direct…Beautifully performed and expertly produced, this is music-making at its most vital, expressive and imaginative.”
– BBC Music Magazine
Does a piece of music consist of the abstract ideas which animate it? Is it about the exact sounds a composer hears in their mind’s ear? Can it just be notes and rhythms, or even a blueprint for construction?
Although we’ve performed with flexible instrumentation works for years – Terry Riley’s In C, Jason Treuting’s Amid the Noise, etc – the concept gained urgency in 2020, when quarantine and social issues made us question and consider every element of music-making and collaboration. Flexibility was the only way forward.
This summer we offered our 13th annual Sō Percussion Summer Institute, a remote, immersive program exploring performance practice and collaboration.
Check out the 2021 SōSI Closing Concert above – it features HOURS of new music and performances by the incredible SōSI artists. Congratulations to all!
We also thank everyone who donated to Sō during SōSI; 100% of those gifts provided meals through The Outreach Program for food-insecure families in Mercer County, NJ.
This is our seventh year partnering with this incredible organization; we are honored to work with them. THANK YOU, all of you who have supported this effort!
Thank you for reading and listening. Be in touch, and be well!
