Percussion Perspectives Podcast

In this Episode Henrik talks with percussionist and performer Aiyun Huang. Aiyun enjoys a musical life as soloist, chamber musician, researcher, teacher, and producer, and is also the Head of the Percussion Program at the University of Toronto.An expert in Percussion Theatre, her work on the subject has been published in Cambridge Companion to Percussion (2016) and Save Percussion Theater (Mode 242). Aiyun is committed to creating a vibrant new music community for the next generation, and is artistic director of the soundSCAPE festival in Italy. 

We talk about subjects as her background, theatrical percussion, memory in motion, transplanted roots symposium, and sustainability – both concerning the new works written for smaller setups and the way we travel as artists. 

Music included: 

Vivian Fung: The Ice is Talking

Iannis Xenakis: Persephassa (binaural recording)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode features LA-based musician Jonathan Hepfer, who runs the concert series Monday Evening Concerts. In the first part of our talk, Jonathan speaks about his studies at the SUNY Buffalo, the Oberlin Conservatory, UCSD, and Musikhochschule Freiburg, and what his different mentors have meant to him. In the second part, he talks about how he developed his thinking as a curator.

The opening music is Jonathan performing Giacinto Sceli's Ko-Tha II; midway you'll hear an excerpt from Salvatore Sciarrino's Le Voci Sottovetro, and at the end a longer excerpt from the 1974 classic Femenine by Julius Eastman.

The Jan Williams/Morton Feldman interview mentioned can be read here . (More recently, British percussionist Joby Burgess interview percussion legend Jan Williams online).

You may watch a Julius Eastman lecture by Jonathan here, and a talk with Hamza Walker here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode percussionist, artistic director and documentarist Ross Karre talks about his education from the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of California San Diego; about his work with The International Contemporary Ensemble in NYC, about how the idea of musical taste is a social construct, about the lack of social awareness in his own education, and about issues that engages him as as a curator.

The musical excerpts are taken from his recording 10.67 cycles, which you may purchase here.

In an episode of Soundmaking Ross talks about the making of this recording.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Australian percussion soloist, chamber musician and educator Claire Edwardes discusses her background as a student and young professional in Europe and Australia, her current practice as an artistic leader for the Ensemble Offspring and about how she works for gender equity in music.

The musical excerpts are taken from:

Matthew Shlomowitz – Hi Hat And Me

Amanda Cole – Glocken Blocken

Harrison Birtwistle  – The Axe Manual (with Nicolas Hodges)

Check out all of Claire's releases here, as well as her project RECITAL.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Line Upon Line Percussion is an Austin-based trio consisting of Cullin Faulk, Adam Bedell and Matthew Teodori. In this episode artistic director, Matthew, gives us an insight into how line upon line is organised and how they work in order to realise their artistic projects.

Check out their album releases here. The musical examples heard in the episode are composed by Matthew Shlomowitz, Dave Broome, and Natacha Diels.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Belgian percussionist, conductor, and artistic director Tom de Cock studied in Brussels and Detmold, and obtained his "Doctor of Arts" degree at the Conservatorium of Brussel in 2015. For years he held a position as the solo percussionist with the Brussels Philharmonic orchestra, and he has been working as a freelance musician internationally with Ensembles such as Ensemble Modern, MusikFabrik, Nadar and Nikel. He is a member of ICTUS where he, besides playing percussion, also conducts, curates programs and runs an advanced master programme in contemporary music called MANAMA.

Check out Tom's and Vincent Caers' site for percussion repertoire pieces called LIVING SCORES LEARN;

and listen to some of Tom's performances here:

Pierluigi Billone solo pieces

Tom's SoundCloud with recent electronic projects

Find some of the ICTUS programs mentioned here (Liquid Room); Einstein on the Beach; Proverbs.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Since the 1990s Christian Dierstein has been one of the most active and influential percussionists in contemporary music. As a member of ensembles such as ensemble recherche, Trio Accanto, as a soloist and commissioner of a large body of works, and not least, as a professor of percussion at the Basel Academy of Music, which houses one of the best percussion classes in Europe in the field of experimental and contemporary music. Christian has performed in countless halls and festivals all over the world, and has collaborated with some of the most significant composers of our time. In our chat, Christian talked about his multi-faceted education, how he tried to get inspired rather than confused by all the different inputs he was exposed to; how he managed to find his own voice as a performing artist, and what keeps him inspired today, 35 years into his career. 

The book "The Techniques of Percussion Playing", which he co-wrote with Michel Roth and Jens Ruland, may be purchased here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode features performer and researcher Louise Devenish. Louise is a contemporary percussionist whose creative practice blends performance, collaboration and artistic research. Louise has commissioned over 50 works for percussion, she develops new works exploring graphic notation, post-instrumental practice and collaborative creativity, and she has performed all over the world with ensembles such as Decibel, Speak Percussion and Synergy Percussion. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Percussion Coordinator at Monash University. In 2021 she published her first book, called Global Percussion Innovations: The Australian Perspective.

Louise talks about career paths for young musicians, about creating new music, about the necessity of developing skills connected to writing, project presentations and grant applications, about how she merges a career as a performer, artistic researcher and an educator, how music can lead to change and contribute to current discourses in society, and about the texts of writer Rebecca Solnit.

The musical excerpts are taken from her solo album music for percussion and electronics (Tall Poppies 2018).

For further reading, you may find the study on portfolio musicians Louise discusses here; as well as her recent article on the developments in the field of instrumental practices here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode experimental percussionist and performer Jennifer Torrence speaks to Henrik about her approaches to performer-composer collaborations, about social and socio-cultural aspects connected to the practice of music, about technical mastery – and about letting go of the idea of mastery altogether.

Discover more about Jennifer's research projects Percussion<– –> Theatre: a body in between and Performing Precarity.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode features percussionist Russell Greenberg in NYC. Russell is an exponent for an experimental cross-genre music. He is a founding member of the Yarn/Wire quartet, a piano/percussion group that commissions new work for this format, and he has performed at numerous venues and festivals around the US an Europe. Russell is currently the co-head of percussion at Purchase College in New York. Russell talks about early vs. current musical influences, about practical aspects connected to running an ensemble in NYC, and psychological aspects related to communication with his band colleagues.

Check out Yarn/Wire's wonderful FEEDBACK Series on YouTube, and not least, their performance of George Crumb's canonical Music for a Summer Evening

Photo by Bobby Fisher

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.