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Think percussion is just about hitting things? Think again.
With instruments that shimmer, thrum, ping and even gurgle underwater, Third Coast Percussion has spent the past 20 years expanding horizons for what a percussion ensemble can do. The Chicago-based quartet returns to the University of Washington’s Meany Center for the Performing Arts on May 3 as part of a milestone anniversary tour.
“The great thing about percussion is that it’s a part of every style of music and every culture in the world,” said David Skidmore, a founding member of the group, in a recent interview. “The program features sounds and influences from a wide variety of musical styles.”
At the same time, that eclecticism is rooted in discipline. “We’re all classically trained, and we work with composers the same way a string quartet would,” Skidmore noted. “But the range of sound we bring into those collaborations is incredibly broad.”
Collaboration is indeed central to TCP’s identity. Over the past two decades, the ensemble has commissioned and premiered more than 125 pieces. “We learn from every composer we work with, and we bring that experience to the next project,” Skidmore said. “Sometimes we can even be a kind of muse, helping composers realize their creative process.”
In 2017, TCP became the first percussion group to win a Grammy Award in the chamber music category for their interpretation of music by Steve Reich.
The Meany Center program showcases music from TCP’s new album, “Standard Stoppages” (just released on Cedille Records), which reflects on the implications of “keeping time” and features works by contemporary composers.
A special focus of the program will be on composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery — named Classical Woman of the Year for 2025 by Performance Today — who will appear in both guises. TCP will perform Montgomery’s “In Color Suite,” which ensemble member Sean Connors arranged for percussion quartet, as well as her latest percussion work, “Lady Justice/Black Justice, The Song.” Montgomery will then join the ensemble onstage as the soloist for Lou Harrison’s pioneering but rarely heard Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra from 1959.
Skidmore said their creative partnership took root when Montgomery moved to Chicago in 2021 to begin a three-year composer residency with the Chicago Symphony. Because she has become such a sought-after composer, finding the time to perform has become more challenging. But Montgomery eagerly accepted the opportunity to perform the Harrison concerto.
“To bring it full circle,” said Skidmore, “Jessie told me how learning Harrison’s percussion writing has influenced her own writing for percussion.” The three-movement concerto swaps the usual symphonic strings for a percussion orchestra that includes wash tubs, tin cans and gongs from Thailand and is “incredibly virtuosic for the soloist and for the ensemble — a great combination of a familiar form with unexpected sounds.”
Seattle is a particularly meaningful stop for Third Coast’s current tour. Harrison spent formative years collaborating with John Cage at Cornish College of the Arts. The duo helped ignite a musical revolution in bringing percussion to the forefront of modern music, laying the groundwork for ensembles like Third Coast to thrive — and for audiences to embrace a whole new palette of sonic possibilities.
Along with the expected drums, TCP presides over a wide array of tuned percussion. Marimbas, vibraphones and glockenspiels provide melody and harmony, while custom-built or even “junk” instruments expand the soundscape even further. The ensemble bends pitch by inserting tubes into drums and blowing into them; dips metal discs (crotales) into water to generate uncanny resonances; and amplifies ordinary objects — from a clock coil to a bass ukulele played with chopsticks — to conjure sounds both unexpected and captivating.
Jlin, an innovative electronic musician whose collaborations with TCP translate digital complexity into live performance, contributes her reimagining of the “Kyrie eleison” from Bach’s B Minor Mass. “She creates her music in software, and then we work with her to adapt it for our instruments,” said Skidmore. Also on the program is the Armenian American composer and pianist Tigran Hamasyan’s imaginative Sonata for Percussion, which features an “incredibly complex rhythmic language,” according to Skidmore, resulting in a “beautiful virtuosity that demands a lot from us as performers.”
For all its sonic sophistication, the visual dimension of a TCP concert is also fascinating. “Percussion is one of the most visual types of music-making,” Skidmore said. “Audiences don’t just hear the sound — they see how it’s made.”
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