Princeton Sound Kitchen presents Sō Percussion

I recently watched Viola Davis’s Hot Ones interview, where she talks about her process from receiving a script to embodying and performing a character. She says, “The key is, you always have to approach a character as if you’re creating a human being … What does she want based on what she needs? What does she live for?” When discussing her role of Annalise Keating on How to Get Away with Murder, she explains that while Annalise was a “badass criminal defense attorney,” and displayed confidence and comfort with herself in one aspect of her life, her past was unstable, she had self-love issues. This would reveal itself in other aspects.

For Davis, the exercise of building a human, creating something living that people can relate to, is a process of stacking character traits on top of each other, and then putting them at odds with one another. It’s in these juxtapositions and misalignments that the character takes shape, and it feels “alive.”

This jolted my attention towards that aspect of my own world-building techniques. I’m always looking for textures and moods that seemingly don’t have anything to do with each other, and finding ways to reconcile their incompatibility with how the piece unfolds. Davis’s interview drew my attention to the fact that, for me, to be living, and to be in the world, is to be given a bunch of jigsaw puzzle pieces, only to realize that the holes are smooth, but eventually you start to realize the beauty to be found in that.

Bobby Ge
System Haptics Off

All of my music is in some way, shape, or form, grounded in how people interact. I have a particular interest in how new social norms develop in and around the presence of everyday tech: the unspoken rules of texting; the limits on cell phone time in public; where and when it’s permissible to cold call someone (i.e. never); whether a thought is more fit for an email, a text, or a direct message, etc.

For all of the incredible conveniences afforded by digital technology, people speak so disparagingly of its ubiquity that manufacturers have actually created features that specifically limit how much digital communication intrudes in daily life. Many of my friends and I permanently enable ‘Do Not Disturb,’ while permanently disabling the annoying buzz of haptic feedback – the way smartphones vibrate to make digital indicators seem more tangible.

This piece is about the inescapable presence of digital intrusion into regular life. The music begins gentle and malleable, vibraphone and steel pan trading phrases back and forth in a decidedly gooey treatment of time. Swiftly, though, sampled iOS sounds and hyperactive hi- hat activity interrupt the thoughtful opening texture. Initially attempting to coexist with these interruptions, the vibes and pans eventually get caught up in all the energy, hurtling headlong into a madcap hodgepodge of wild rhythms, notifications, and rude interjections.

System Haptics Off was written for the incredible musicians and pedagogues of Sō Percussion. They are some of the kindest, most generous, and most skillful musicians I have had the pleasure of working with, and they made the process of writing this piece an absolute joy.

Isaac Santos
etude II “bomba”

In etude II “bomba”, my goal was to capture the essence of cultural memory and its fleeting presence (particularly in regards to my Borinquen heritage.)

Nathan Schram
So Flamenco

This is a work about playing with the immediate inspiration around me. I stumbled upon an instagram post of an impromptu flamenco performance on a crowded subway in Sevilla. I grabbed the audio and twisted it around to create the basis of this work for So. Thank you to Eric, Josh, Adam, and Jason for bringing new life to this ephemeral social media post.

– INTERMISSION –

Hannah Ishizaki
Redacted

Redacted explores the relationship between individual and group through playing with how each percussionist can influence each other’s sound on one single drum set. Each percussionist takes on the role of a ‘layer’ of the drumbeat, for example, the snare line or a hi- hat groove. The group theatrically navigates the dynamics of sharing one instrument, muting each others’ instruments, playing the same part of the drum set, or creating one cohesive sound across different instruments.

A huge thank you to Eric, Josh, Adam, and Jason, for their endless creativity and guidance on this project!

kennedy taylor dixon
blah, blah

A huge thank you to Sō for their patience, knowledge, and artistry throughout the writing process of this piece. Music writing becomes more fun and adventurous when it is to be performed by musicians that will bring it to life unlike any others.

And, why yes, I did manage to write a (sort of) string quartet for four percussionists. are any of us surprised?

Ellie Cherry
Breaking News

Breaking News is inspired by the amusingly petty historic squabble between American newspaper companies and their rival radio news broadcasting organizations at the beginning of the 20th century. Known officially as The Media Wars, the discord between print and radio news sources reached a head in 1938, when representatives of the printed press organized a summit at a hotel in New York, in an attempt to illegalize radio news broadcasts. Not having any substantial argument to justify banning radio stations from reporting the news, the newspaper companies intentionally exaggerated the extent of the panic caused by Mercury Theatre’s 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds. By falsely claiming the hoax-news radio special had incited mass national panic, newspaper companies ultimately built a case that radio was dangerous for public morale, arguing that radio’s power to disseminate news so far and so fast posed a threat to public safety.

In this piece, I recreate the printed press’s depiction of radio as an omnipotent national threat to an absurd degree, constructing a warped reality in which the radio not only has the power to influence emotions, but can also mind control humans, puppeteer their bodies, and distort the laws of time. The piece unfolds in six phases, each depicting the same scene of four workers in a newspaper press room tuning in to the radio as they work to monitor their competitors’ news bulletins. Each phase begins identically, suggesting the workers are caught in a time loop. However, once a radio announcer cuts in with emergency news briefs (which progress in absurdity from weather reports to Martians taking over the Earth) the phases diverge into increasingly wild breaks from reality. By the time we reach the sixth phase, it is apparent that what at first seemed to be nothing more than the sound of a singer’s voice in a cheerful oldies tune is in fact a supernatural malevolent being that lives inside the radio. The stronger it becomes, the more it controls the workers’ minds and bodies, forcing their natural motions into a rigid rhythmic pace.

Ellie Cherry is an electroacoustic composer fundamentally compelled by the belief that as an artist she is first and foremost an observer: be it the acoustic properties of the bark of a beech tree or the childhood experiences of an audience member, every element in our shared reality is worthy of consideration. Her composition therefore takes a holistic approach, in which spectral theory, physics, psychoacoustics, and historical and political context are all thoughtfully intertwined. She is particularly interested in exploring how new music composition can provide an effective platform for activism, frequently addressing topics such as environmentalism, gender and class inequality, and trauma.

Francisco del Pino is a Buenos Aires–born composer and guitarist with an affinity for music that is meticulous, expressive, and patient. Drawing influence from both classical and vernacular traditions, his work revolves around process and pattern and is usually characterized by an extensive use of counterpoint. Francisco is a PhD candidate in the Music Department and a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities.

Gladstone Deluxe (they/he) is a New York–based artist working with percussion and electronics. Their work takes form in performances, recorded music, and installations.
As a percussionist, Gladstone is interested in how conceptions and politics of time are embodied, and can bleed into the social topography of a culture through rhythmic performance. As a technologist, they develop systems for the augmentation and amplification of percussive messages. His experimental approach towards composition and interface design is a collision of the spiritual and the cybernetic. In 2023, Gladstone released music with Black Techno Matters, is / was, DETOUR, Ongoing Box, and Miscellaneous Records. Films that Gladstone scored were shown at the British Film Institute, a STARZ television premiere, the Hawai’i International Film Festival, and more. He’s appeared in galleries like The Warhol Museum, Rubin Foundation, Chashama, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and night clubs across the country. 2024 holds collaborations with Moog Synthesizers, Sō Percussion, Attacca Quartet, and more. Gladstone also keeps busy as the timbales player for Las Mariquitas, which was recently featured in Rolling Stone. Gladstone holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Columbia University, and is pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University.

Kennedy Taylor Dixon is a composer, violist, and scholar currently residing in Princeton, New Jersey. Described as a “vibrant musical voice,” Dixon often writes for herself and is also passionate about collaborating with members in her musical community. Recent highlights of her career include recipient of Westminster College’s inaugural Hear and Now Emerging BIPOC Composer Commission (April 2023), Tetractys New Music: Here Be Monsters Commission (May 2023), New Music Gathering performer participant (June 2023), and Bang on a Can Composer Fellow (July 2023). Dixon has worked with numerous artists throughout her career, such as JACK Quartet, Sō Percussion, ~Nois, F-Plus, Boston Children’s Chorus, Parker Ramsey, Michael J. Love, and more. Dixon holds a MA in Music Composition in addition to her dual undergraduate degrees in Viola Performance and Music Composition from Western Michigan University. Dixon is currently pursuing her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University as a President’s Fellow.

Liam Elliot is a composer, sound artist, and instrument builder from Calgary. His work seeks to create a sense of place and reflects a fascination with the sounds and processes of the natural world. Through his music and sound installations, Liam encourages audiences to listen in new ways to the world around them. He creates acoustic and electroacoustic pieces for concert performance and builds sound sculptures that directly transform natural processes into musical sound. As a performer and improvisor, he builds physical and digital instruments to shape the sounds of his collaborators and works directly with the sounds of nature to create unique sonic environments.

Aliayta Foon-Dancoes is an award-winning Canadian violinist, composer and interdisciplinary collaborator. Until this Fall, she was living in London, England, working with the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC, and 12 Ensemble. She has performed at the Musikverein, Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Philharmonie de Paris and the BBC Proms. Collaboration is central to Aliayta’s practice. She is a co-founder of the commissioning project Orbit Duo and the interdisciplinary collective THIRTYMINUTES. Through these projects, Aliayta has composed for new instruments designed by sound sculptor Marla Hlady, commissioned and performed pieces by Olivia Shortt, Cris Derksen and Robyn Jacob, premiered work at the Canadian Opera Company, and exhibited experimental audiovisual pieces Sub Tei (Berlin) and Espacio Gallery (London). Recently, Aliayta recorded on Esmerine’s Juno award-winning album Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More, and, with her sister, Rebecca Foon, co-wrote the soundtrack for One & One Other, a film commissioned by the Baryshnikov Arts Centre. Other work includes a collaboration with Patti Smith and Pathway to Paris, performances alongside Patrick Watson at Live At Lost River, and a tour of Phases, a live violin and multi-channel sound performance co-created with London based new media design studio Kai Lab. Aliayta holds a BA from the University of Victoria, a MA from the Royal Academy of Music and has held Chamber Music Fellowships at both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music (London). This Fall, she will begin a PhD in Composition at Princeton University.

Bobby Ge is a Chinese-American composer and avid collaborator who seeks to create vivid emotional journeys that navigate boundaries between genre and medium. He has created multimedia projects with the Space Telescope Science Institute, painters collective Art10Baltimore, the Scattered Players Theater Company, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Winner of the 2022 Barlow Prize, Ge has received commissions and performances by groups including the Minnesota Orchestra, the New York Youth Symphony, the Albany Symphony, the US Navy Band, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Harbin Symphony Orchestra, Interlochen Arts Academy, Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Youth Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Youth Orchestra, Music from Copland House, the Pacific Chamber Orchestra, the Bergamot Quartet, and Mind on Fire. He is currently pursuing his PhD at Princeton University as a Naumberg Fellow, and holds degrees from UCBerkeley and the Peabody Conservatory.

Hannah Ishizaki is a composer and sound artist based in Princeton. Her music seeks to foster connections between musicians and the audience through the explorations of the physicality of music performance. Ishizaki finds inspiration in the process of composition, leading her to experiment with a wide range of instruments and sound generating methods—from acoustic instruments in an orchestra to digital sensors to rocks and zippers. Immersed in the world of collaboration, Ishizaki has worked with dancers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists, to connect the seemingly unconnected and create innovative and multidisciplinary projects. Recently, Ishizaki was named one of five 2023 Hildegard commission winners, which is presented by National Sawdust and generously supported by The Onassis Foundation and the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Ishizaki’s work has been recognized throughout the United States and Internationally and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations such as Midori Goto, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the Dresden Musikfestspiele. Ishizaki is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University. She studied with Andrew Norman for composition and Areta Zhulla and Ronald Copes for violin at the Juilliard School, where she was the first composer to receive a Kovner Fellowship.

Travis Laplante is a composer, improviser, and saxophonist. Laplante leads the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance, as well as Subtle Degrees, his duo with drummer Gerald Cleaver. Recently, Laplante has composed long-form works for new music ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, Yarn/Wire, and the ~Nois Saxophone Quartet. Laplante is also known for his raw solo saxophone concerts and being a member of the avant-garde quartet Little Women. He has performed and / or recorded with Tyshawn Sorey, Caroline Shaw, Ches Smith, Peter Evans, Sō Percussion, Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, International Contemporary Ensemble, Michael Formanek, Buke and Gase, Darius Jones, Mat Maneri, Julia Bullock, and Matt Mitchell, among others. Laplante has released 12 critically acclaimed albums as a leader or co-leader on New Amsterdam Records, Aum Fidelity, Skirl, Tripticks Tapes, Out of Your Head Records, and NNA Tapes. Laplante has toured his music extensively and has appeared at many major international festivals such as The Moers Festival (Germany), Jazz Jantar (Poland), Saalfelden (Austria), Jazz em Agosto (Portugal), Earshot (Seattle), Hopscotch (North Carolina), and the NYC Winter JazzFest. As a composer, Laplante has been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), the JACK Quartet, Roulette Intermedium, Yarn/Wire, the Yellow Barn Music Festival, the MATA festival, and The Jerome Foundation.

Lucy McKnight is an artist who works with colors, textures, and sounds to create environments where she and others can explore intense emotions and ways of surviving them. She is interested in using touch, connection, movement, and sound to build mutually cathartic experiences. Recent mediums include wood, strings, pots, paint, ceramics, tinfoil, magnets, fabric, her cello, her own body and voice, and her friends’ bodies and voices. Her work has been performed across the US and in Europe by artists including Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Yarn/Wire, ~Nois, Parker Ramsay, Dither Quartet, Longleash Trio, and Transient Canvas. In her spare time, she loves to swim in natural bodies of water, with particular affinity for the Pacific Ocean off the coast of her hometown, Los Angeles. Currently, she and her three deeply affectionate cats live in her wildly colorful home in Trenton, New Jersey while she works on her PhD in Music Composition at Princeton University.

Christian Quiñones is a Puerto Rican composer who explores personal and vulnerable stories through the lens of cultural identity. From sampling to auto-tune, and to interactive multimedia, Christian is interested in interacting with existing music to create intertextual narratives. Recently Christian was selected as a composer in residence at the Copland House, and as a fellow for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Workshop, Cabrillo Festival, and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. In 2020 he was selected for the Earshot Underwood Orchestra Readings where he worked with the American Composers Orchestra. He has received commissions from the New York Youth Symphony, Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, Transient Canvas, the icarus Quartet, the Bergamot String Quartet, Chromic Duo, and the Victory Players where Christian was the 2018 – 2019 composer in residence. His music has been performed by Alarm Will Sound, Dal Niente, Hub New Music, Yarn/Wire, Loadbang, Unheard-of Ensemble, Victory Players, the American Composers Orchestra, and René Izquierdo. Christian graduated from the Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico (BM) and the University of Illinois (MM), where he was the recipient of the Graduate College Master’s Fellowship. Currently, Christian is a PhD President’s fellow at Princeton University.

My name is Isaac Santos and I am a composer of contemporary concert music. Much of my current output is inspired by nature, existentialism, and everyday life. Through the creation of my musical work, I hope to communicate feelings and emotions buried deep in the cacophony of modern life; feelings and emotions we seldom have time to acknowledge, or understand. I believe that it is through grappling with them head-on‚ both musically and extra-musically, that we are able to better understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. My teachers have included Stephen Hartke, Elizabeth Ogonek, Jesse Jones, Michael Frazier, Jihyun Kim, Juri Seo, Dmitri Tymoczko, and Nathalie Joachim, all of whom I love dearly, as they have continued to support me and advocate for my music. I completed my bachelor’s degree in music composition at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, in the spring of 2023. Before coming to Oberlin, I studied privately for half a year with composer Andrew Boss. I currently reside in Princeton, New Jersey, where I am pursuing my PhD in Music Composition.

Nathan Schram is a member of the Attacca Quartet and the Founder & Artistic Director of Musicambia, an organization that develops music education programs in prisons throughout the United States. Albums of his original music have been released on New Amsterdam and Better Company Records. He has a wife and daughter and adores living in Princeton.

For twenty years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (The New Yorker). They are celebrated by audiences and presenters for a dazzling range of work: for live performances in which “telepathic powers of communication” (The New York Times) bring to life the vibrant percussion repertoire; for an extravagant array of collaborations in classical music, pop, indie rock, contemporary dance, and theater; and for their work in education and community, creating opportunities and platforms for music and artists that explore the immense possibility of art in our time. Their commitment to the creation and amplification of new work, and their extraordinary powers of perception and communication have made them a trusted partner for composers, allowing the writing of music that expands the style and capacity of brilliant voices of our time. Sō’s collaborative composition partners include Caroline Shaw, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nathalie Joachim, Dan Trueman, Kendall K. Williams, Angélica Negrón, Shodekeh Talifero, Claire Rousay, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bora Yoon, Olivier Tarpaga, Bobby Previte, Matmos, and many others. In 2023 – 2024, Sō returns to Carnegie Hall for its biennial Zankel show, offering world premieres by composers Vijay Iyer, Angélica Negrón, and Olivier Tarpaga, as well as a sprawling performance of the latest flexible work by Sō’s Jason Treuting, Go Placidly with Haste. Other dates this season include Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa, Oklahoma Philharmonic (for David Lang’s man made, written for Sō, and featured in their latest recording with the Cincinnati Symphony and Louis Langrée); concerts with composer / performer Shodekeh Talifero at the Library of Congress; in Berlin with Caroline Shaw; performances in Burkina Faso with Olivier Tarpaga; and more. Recent highlights have included performances at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Big Ears, Cal Performances, at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, at the Barbican in London, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Penn Live Arts in Philadelphia, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and at The 92nd Street Y, New York. Their Nonesuch recording, Narrow Sea, with Caroline Shaw, Dawn Upshaw, and Gilbert Kalish, won the 2022 Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Other recent albums include the co-composed cycle with Caroline Shaw, Let the Soil Play its Simple Part; A Record Of… on Brassland Music with Buke and Gase, and—on new imprint Sō Percussion Editions—an acclaimed version of Julius Eastman’s Stay On It, plus Darian Donovan Thomas’s Individuate. This adds to a catalog of more than twenty-five albums featuring landmark recordings of works by David Lang, Steve Reich, Steven Mackey, and many more. In Fall 2023, Sō Percussion began its tenth year as the Edward T. Cone performers-in-residence at Princeton University. Rooted in the belief that music is an elemental form of human communication, and galvanized by forces for social change, Sō enthusiastically pursues a range of social and community outreach through their nonprofit umbrella, including partnerships with local ensembles including Pan in Motion and Castle of Our Skins; their Sō Laboratories concert series; a studio residency program in Brooklyn; and the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for percussionists and composers. Sō is: Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting.

Max Vinetz’s music draws inspiration from various intersections between improvisatory, popular, and traditional forms and aesthetics. His work centers the perception of rhythmic and timbral events and is concerned with the relationships between narrative, musical objects, and sonic artifacts as they relate to music and other forms of media. Max is a recipient of a Fromm Foundation Commission, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Award (2018, 2020), the Paul and Christiane Cooper Prize, and the Gardner Prize from the American Viola Society. He has received additional recognition and awards from Voices of Ascension, the Doug Davis Composition and Performance Endowment, Musiqa, Copland House, and the Mizzou International Composers Festival. As a Yale undergraduate, Max won the Beekman Cannon Friends Prize, awarded for a “musical composition exhibiting unusual originality and promise,” the Abraham Beekman Cox Prize awarded to the “most promising and gifted composer” in the junior class, and was also awarded the Lewis P. Curtis Fellowship, the Tristan Perlroth Prize, and the R.J.R. Cohen Fellowship for Musical Performance (2017, 2018). Upcoming projects include an evening length staged electroacoustic song cycle for panSonus, titled The New Manilla Envelope and an EP written in collaboration with Anson Jones. A graduate of both Yale and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Max is currently pursuing his PhD in Composition at Princeton University as a Naumburg Doctoral Fellow.

Justin Wright is a composer, cellist, and multimedia artist from Montreal, Canada. After finishing his masters in molecular biology, Justin left science and started performing in bands of all sorts before eventually teaching himself how to compose, using the techniques he learned in recording studios. Justin’s primary composition tools, for both electronic and acoustic music, are his cello, Ableton Live, a modular synthesizer, and a 4-track tape machine. Lately, Justin has focused on filmmaking, early music, virtual reality, and in situ composition. He has opened for artists such as Johann Johannsson, Hauschka, Thomas Mapfumo, Lubomyr Melnyk, Colin Stetson, Okkyung Lee, and Mount Eerie. Justin’s most recent album, A Really Good Spot, was released in July 2022 on Beacon Sound and First Terrace Records. This past summer, Justin traveled to Svalbard, an archipelago close to the North Pole, and serenaded the glaciers with the most northerly cello performances in history.