Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
– Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata”

Jason Treuting’s Amid the Noise began as a soundtrack, which morphed into our third album and then into a flexible set of live music. Now it is a communal music-making project that can occur with a flexible number of musicians in almost any combination.

The musical ideas in Amid the Noise are abstract: drones, melodies, rhythms, textures, patterns. Originally, So Percussion orchestrated them on the instruments we had in our studio, but we’ve since discovered that accordion, organ, or tuba might play a satisfying drone as well as bowed vibraphone! Like Terry Riley’s In C, this work maintains its identity and integrity even through wildly different realizations.

This modular concept allows us to conduct residencies that reach beyond percussion departments. Many kinds of students at a music school or conservatory can participate in Amid the Noise: vocalists, string quartets, wind and brass players, guitarists, and of course percussionists.

This score contains instructions and notated music for realizing unique performances of Amid the Noise.