The Fresh and Hopeful Face of Traditional Music
By Sarah Lerner
It’s surprising how the four members of So Percussion make playing music seem so easy, slamming down onto drum sets or gently tapping teacups to produce just the right pitch. They are sometimes synchronized yet even when they’re not, each note is confident and precise despite the many layers of their avant-garde pieces. In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers, which explores the phenomena of success, he explains the well-worn conceit that anyone with 10,000 hours (or roughly ten years) of practice can become an expert. It makes sense then that each of So’s members, Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting, have been playing the drums since their elementary school years.
Their adept abilities at playing have allowed So Percussion much freedom in exploring their chosen medium, although as Sliwinski explains, that’s what drumming is all about. “The whole point of the idea of the percussion group was just to try a whole bunch of new stuff. John Cage and Lou Harrison back as far as the 1950s formed percussion orchestras to play some of the kinds of nutty music that they were writing.” In that regard, So Percussion has been wildly successful, collaborating with titans of the avant-garde such as Steve Reich, Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang, and au courant acts such as Dan Deacon and the Dirty Projectors. “We try to keep a naïve and open-ended attitude about it. We really believe in this stuff and think a lot of people would like it if they saw it,” said Quillin. Their extreme openness has also allowed them to perform in a multitude of venues, from revered institution Carnegie Hall to quirky NYC performance space The Kitchen.
Yet what has most likely fueled their wide-ranging performances is not their instrument but So’s extreme passion and exuberance, which comes through both in their words and performances. The names of seminal musicians like Steve Reich gush from their mouths at many of my questions regarding their influences and education, as did their regret at being a part of the generation who didn’t get to personally work with John Cage (they were thirteen when he died). Most of their collaborations came about just because So Percussion were fans of a certain musician’s work. Sliwinski boyishly grins as he explains, “A lot of what we’re looking for is someone who has an idea that we think is cool.” They often begin with a simple blind phone call, which is how So began to work with David Lang, arranging their first commissioned work and a creating a strong relationship with Bang on a Can, an organization Lang co-founded in 1987 whose mission is to bring new music to the forefront.
It was through the Bang on a Can festival in May of 2008 that I was first exposed to So Percussion, sometime around two in the morning during the 12-hour festival. On a sprawling marble staircase in the World Financial Center they performed the so called laws of nature, a piece by Lang in which they stand in a row and complete grueling, almost identical patterns of notes roughly ten minutes in length, first on homemade instruments made of wooden planks, than on metal, and finally on an assortment of teacups and flowerpots. Notes landed on top of notes melodically, as though they were meant to be, no matter what object produced it. Like many of their other pieces, So’s performance was transformative, allowing me to leave my time and place behind to wherever the notes would take me. Their exactitude would seem almost mechanical were it not for So Percussion’s abundance of excitement about the music itself. Whatever genre So’s sound might be placed in on a given night (as it tends to morph with every piece) I have been hypnotized each and every time, my emotions at the whim of each high and low sound like a puppet on strings. Luckily, I always trust where they will take me.
Despite the freshness of their work, So is eager to give credit to their predecessors such as percussion ensembles the Black Earth Percussion Group, the Cincinnati Group and Nexus. Our interview became the ultimate music lesson, as the Yale-educated musicians expounded on music from the Caribbean (Josh studied the steel drums in Trinidad), Indonesia (Jason studied gamelan in Bali), Europe (and its suppression of the folk drumming style in favor of classical), and the traditional music of Africa, “All instruments come from folk music, but some like the Stradivarius have now been connected to high art,” explained Treuting. Sliwinski added, “We hope to recontextualize; Josh is an amazing steel drum player, but what do you hear when you hear steel drums? Cruise ship. Jason wrote a really beautiful piece for the steel drums. Although people will probably say, that sounds like really beautiful cruise ship music,”
The band formed at Yale in 1999, though the only original member is Treuting, who gave them their name. It all started as a school project, just a couple of students practicing classical compositions after school. Upon discovering how exhilarating it was to play, Treuting and three friends decided to work on music outside of school assignments. While the other original members ended up leaving the band (all are now professors at various universities) their slots were readily filled by Sliwinski, Quillen, and most recently Beach. Although the members of So are all technically trained in the classic repertoire of percussion pieces, as Sliwinski explains, percussionists are often more pliable than that. “Being a percussionist is such a kid in a candy shop kind of thing with all these different things you can try out. The eclecticism that’s in our group kind of grows out of what it is to be a drummer. Jason [Treuting] used to play jazz, and Eric [Beach] used to be in a heavy metal band.”
Recently, So Percussion played an intimate show of original music at Joe’s Pub, a small and dimly lit venue near Astor Place Manhattan Imaginary City Brooklyn , NY Cleveland , OH Helena , MT Houston , TX Burlington , VT Denver , CO
The universality that dominates their new piece is a common thread of So Percussion’s aesthetic. Their goal is not to embody the avant-garde, be the next “it” band, or simply be known as kitschy for their use of objects as instruments. Instead, they hope to reach as wide of an audience as possible, knowing that all will not love everything they do. In talking about one show’s reception, Quillen explained, “You go to so many music concerts and you think, I didn’t like that, but maybe if I say anything I’m going to be shunned…but I didn’t even like everything that happened that night, and we were playing it. It was my own show.” It is easy to tell by listening to the band or striking up a conversation with one of its members that the point is far beyond pure entertainment. So Percussion loves to, as Josh describes it, “nerd out,” about music. “It’s sad that they’re cutting funds for school band programs, because none of us would be here today without them,” lamented Sliwinski. By the time I left the interview I knew more about the history of drumming than I had learned in any music class, all because these guys can name every piece of music that has influenced their wok. They can trace each instrument to its most humble, folkloric origin, and with good reason. They’re the experts.
Spring 2009
Sarah Lerner
703-819-1008
sml2234@gmail.com
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