Third Coast Percussion | "Japurá River" by Philip Glass

"Japurá River" by Philip Glass

Performed & Arranged by Third Coast Percussion
Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore

From Third Coast Percussion's new album Paddle to the Sea, available February 9 from Cedille Records. http://www.cedillerecords.org/albums/...

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ABOUT THE PIECE:

Japurá River from Aguas da Amazonia by Philip Glass

Philip Glass was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.”

In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty-five operas, large and small; eleven symphonies; piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, and saxophone quartet and orchestra; original scores to Oscar nominated films Kundun, The Hours, and Notes on A Scandal; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.


Glass’s 12 Pieces for Ballet, originally composed for piano, was arranged by Brazilian musical group Uakti for their own gamut of instruments, many of which were custom-made and built by the performers. This new version of the piece was renamed Aguas da Amazonia, after the Amazon river and its tributaries. Drawing on both the Uakti arrangement and the original piano music, Third Coast Percussion arranged four of the twelve pieces, exploiting our vast instrument arsenal and experimenting with color blends across the spectrum from “non-pitched” to “pitched” percussion. Arranging Glass’s music pushed us to reimagine familiar material with a different sound palette and offered a chance to live inside the music of one of the most recognized voices in the contemporary classical music world.

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MALLETS USED:

#vfM153 - Ensemble Series
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#vfM241 - Contemporary Series
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#vfM132 - Orchestral Series
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ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE:

Third Coast Percussion is a Grammy Award-winning, artist-run quartet of classically-trained percussionists hailing from the great city of Chicago. For over ten years, the ensemble has forged a unique path in the musical landscape with virtuosic, energetic performances that celebrate the extraordinary depth and breadth of musical possibilities in the world of percussion. The ensemble has been praised for “commandingly elegant” (New York Times) performances, the “rare power” (Washington Post) of their recordings, and “an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity” (Minnesota Star-Tribune). The four members of Third Coast are also accomplished teachers, and since 2013, have served as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

A direct connection with the audience is at the core of all of Third Coast Percussion’s work, whether the musicians are speaking from the stage about a new piece of music, inviting the audience to play along in a concert or educational performance, or inviting their fans around the world to create new music using one of their free mobile apps.

Third Coast Percussion maintains a busy touring schedule, with past performances in 32 of the 50 states plus Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, and venues ranging from concert halls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and De Doelen to clubs and alternative performance spaces such as New York’s Le Poisson Rouge and the National Gallery’s West Garden Court.

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