So Percussion: Steve Reich’s Drumming

For 25 years and counting, Grammy-winning percussion quartet 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-building, seeking to explore the immense possibility of art in our time. Sō Percussion is Jason Treuting, Adam Sliwinski, Josh Quillen, and Eric Cha-Beach.

For Sō Percussion, the reasons to play Steve Reich’s Drumming are simple: it is exhilarating to perform, it is elemental yet intelligent, and it is fun to share with audiences. The other story, however, is an evolutionary approach to musical composition. Although every note of Drumming rocks, its existence is due to the composer’s tireless search for new modes of musical expression.

For Reich, Drumming was both a refinement of past techniques and a departure for new ones. Most importantly, he wanted audiences to hear all of the processes that make the music what it is. One rhythm permeates the entire piece. At the beginning, two players dramatically build that rhythm up one note at a time. This is a bold statement: Many other composers of Reich’s generation worked very hard to construct layers of mind-boggling complexity in their music.

Once this rhythm builds up, one player starts moving slightly faster than the other. The result sounds at first like a musical train wreck, but gradually a new rhythm emerges, which is really the same rhythm set in different places. Other musicians then begin picking out patterns from this grid. These patterns move through three different instrument families (drums, marimbas, glockenspiels), and gradually up four octaves over the course of an hour.

Reich’s study in Africa enabled him to write music that had to be percussion music. Its ecstatic grooves communicate directly, without pretense. Drumming captures the immediacy of that experience, and gives us a reference point for work still to come.