Percussion Perspectives Podcast: Recent Episodes
Håkon Mørch Stene and Henrik Knarborg Larsen
Hello, and welcome to our podcast, which features professional artists, performers and researchers, primarily from the field of music, talking about their practice. Our idea with this series is to reach out to music students and young professionals who wish to gain more insight into the minds of established artists, teachers and researchers in order to learn more about what it takes to build an independent professional artistic practice. We are both percussionists ourselves, and approach the different areas from that perspective. Topics covered across different episodes are artistic influences, practicing and time management, creativity, composer/performer collaborations, approaches to creating and funding artistic projects, how to create an ensemble, artistic research, how one's perspectives on the practice of music changes over time…and much more.
We hope you enjoy listening!
…and please send us a note if there are topics you'd like to see covered.
Håkon Mørch Stene & Henrik Knarborg Larsen.
In this episode Henrik Knarborg talks with Evelyn Glennie about the role as a soloist, new commissions and advises for younger percussionists how to create a career. We also come closer to some of the mythical abilities to “listen” with the body and even how the vision is connected to this. Evelyn Glennie just received the renowned Danish Sonning Music Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in the world, and played an intense Galla-concert including no less than 3 percussion concertos in the same program. More than just an amazing soloist, Evelyn also has clear goals with her music and art, and this is for sure a “must hear” episode.
Sound examples:
Vincent Ho: The Shaman (2017) with Winnipeg S.O. and conductor Alexander Mickelthwate
https://open.spotify.com/album/2x8qSrgsS711NH93Tj4xM3?si=b5ydxQl8R_Oq11E7qS1O4A&nd=1
Shadow behind the Iron Sun (1999): Evelyn Glennie, Michael Brauer, David Motion.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1So0i5v9IZFQ1Xm4DmVnws?si=6e2c2b3b11094ba1
Sonning Prize homepage:
https://www.sonningmusik.dk/evelyn-glennie/?lang=en
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In this episode we dive into the historical 60’s and 70’s percussion scene in Northern Europe, Instrumental Theatre and aspects of teaching and interpretation:
Einar Nielsen is professor emeritus at The Academy of Music and Drama, Gothenburg University, now living in Copenhagen. Since the early seventies, he has toured Europe and North and South America together with some of the finest musicians and composers within classical avant-garde music, like the ensembles Trio Celeste (dk), Elsinore Players (dk), Studiegruppen (dk), Sub Rosa (dk), Transit Ensemble (de), Duo Kontarsky (de), Corona Danseteater (dk), Essential Music (New York), Cinnober Teater (se), and he also had close long-term collaborations with especially the composers Mauricio Kagel (de), Per Nørgård (dk), Karl Aage Rasmussen (dk) and Charles Morrow (New York). In 1974 he won the Salabert Prize at the Rencontre International de Percussion in La Rochelle, France, and since then he has taught at several universities in Scandinavia. As a soloist, chamber musician, performer, actor, conductor, etc., he has performed more than 600 contemporary works, including many premieres.
Very early on, Einar Nielsen started playing in professional symphony orchestras, but the meeting with Argentinian-German Mauricio Kagel and his instrumental theater in 1968 opened up an insight into the more soloistic possibilities that one would get as a performer, developing the performer's juggling game between tragedy and humor, crying and laughter, typical for the absurdly experimental instrumental theater. Beside still acting as a performing artist, he is engaged in pedagogical research associated with interpretative processes in music with a special focus on assessment aspects.
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Vanessa is a percussive artist dedicated to exploring how sound shapes our lives, awakening our ears to new sounds, in new spaces, with the hope that attentive listening will lead to attentive custodianship of place. With a long history in experimental music, Vanessa uses this body of knowledge to consider how we listen through site-specific explorations and collaborations. Trained as a percussionist in Australia, Germany and the USA, Vanessa relies on this sonic investigation of objects to build compositions, create contexts for improvisation, interpret the voices of other composers and collaborate across art-forms and disciplines. She has toured the world for 25 years, premiering over 100 works by significant national and international composers, presenting work at major international festivals, and collaborating with improvisers, dancers, artists and more.
Key projects include The Immersive Guitar (with Karin Schaupp at Curiocity Brisbane), The Piano Mill (a purpose built structure in the Australian bush), Sounding the Condamine (examining the history of the Condamine Bell in outback Queensland), Water Pushes Sand (examining intersections between Sichuan Opera and improvisational practices with Australian Art Orchestra), Sonic Dreams (a series of compositions about extinct and imaginary sounds) and Here and Now (her first book, examining approaches to music making in an Australian context).
She studied at the University of Adelaide, Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg and received her Masters and Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego where she worked closely with Steven Schick and George Lewis. In addition Vanessa has studied Sichuan Opera with Master Zhong Kaichi in Chengdu, China. She has been on the faculty of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music for 18 years, transforming the field of percussion in Australia, helping to define the field of Artistic Practice in music internationally, and pioneering the performer/composer, interpreter/improviser pathway for students. She is currently Director of Creative Arts Research Institute at Griffith University where she continues to drive research projects that help define the agenda for performing artists in the academy.
The episode includes sounds from
Excerpt from Lonely Hearts Pandemic Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaqzLu_AhuQ&list=PLM-eAZLeWDtlmg4hRNW0DKuJKt-aAHfWE
and
Vibrations in a landscape by Vanessa Tomlison and Erik Griswold
Performed at The Piano Mill with students from BaDaBoom Percussion (Queensland Conservatorium Percussion Department)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ed8VKVq5ww
Solo tamtam
https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/the-space-inside
Found object masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXS67tbHC74
Playing vibraphone
https://vimeo.com/331963991
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Andy Meyerson is a drummer and percussionist based in San Francisco, California. He is the Artistic Director, co-founder, and percussionist of The Living Earth Show, one of the premiere experimental classical ensembles in the United States. Named one of the “22 performers to watch in ‘22” by the Washington Post, The Living Earth Show has presented over a decade of “outstanding” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “transcendent” (Charleston City Paper) new music that pushes the boundaries of technical and artistic possibility while amplifying voices, perspectives, and bodies that the classical music tradition has often excluded.
He is also the drummer and co-founder of queer nü metal collective COMMANDO, music director of renegade dance company Post:ballet, and the artistic director and CEO of uncompromising experimental chamber music record label Earthy Records.
Here are links to some of the topics discussed in this episode:
Mark Appelbaum – The Mad Scientist of Muisc (TED talk)
Brian Ferneyhough – Renvoi/Shards (2010) (live performance by The Living Earth Show)
Sarah Hennies – A Kind of Ache https://www.thelivingearthshow.com/productions/a-kind-of-ache
Amadeus Regucera– IMY/ILY
Also check out the podcast on the Album “Lyra” by Samuel Adams and The Living Earth Show here.
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Leif Karlsson is a renowned Swedish conductor, chief conductor for the State Wind Symphony Trimitas in Lithuania and the Inspector of Music in the Swedish Armed Forces. He has worked with a great number of orchestras in Scandinavia over the last decades and has premiered more than 250 compositions. As a percussionist Leif Karlsson was one of the founding members of the world renowned percussion ensemble Kroumata, with which he recorded, toured and preformed for 30 years. With Kroumata, he was a soloist with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berliner Symphoniker, WDR Rundfunkorchester, Singapore Symphony, Gothenburg Symphony orchestra, Islands Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, amongst others. Over the years, Kroumata performed in 43 countries and almost 600 cities worldwide and recorded 19 critically acclaimed records.
As a Swedish ambassador for the arts, Leif Karlsson was honored with the Positive Sweden honorary award. He has performed at international state visits of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Sweden. Leif Karlsson is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
You may watch Kroumata's 1999 performance of Xenakis' "Peaux" here, and a full concert from 1993 here.
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Vanessa Porter is a German percussionist based in Stuttgart. She is one of the most active percussionists in her generation internationally. Her performances often combine composed works with improvisation, also employing electronics and visual media. In the 2033/23 season she will perform as a soloist of ECHO (European Concert Hall Organisation) in the most renowned European concert halls such as Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Barbican Centre London, Philharmonie Paris, L’Auditori Barcelona, and many more. She collaborates with many renowned composers and is regularly performing with groups such as Ensemble Modern, Ascolta Ensemble, and Les Percussions de Strasbourg.
Check out Vanessa's recent solo albums here.
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Christian Windfeld, b.1983, is a Danish improviser, composer, percussionist and educated soloist from The Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. Since the age of 19 he has build an international career touring all over Europe, North America and Australia and lived in Stockholm, New York and Berlin.Windfeld has a minimalist but highly expressive approach to the percussive instruments often reducing his set-up to focus on just one instrument e.g. the snare drum to explore its full potential aiming to transcend the general perception of its capabilities.
As a composer he has created pieces and installations to art exhibitions and cross media publications with writers and visual artists.
Windfeld is featured as a leading figure on more than 30 recordings and have so far recorded two solo albums under the alias FØRSTEPERSONENTAL (FIRSTPERSONSINGULAR) the first released in 2014 and the second, ROTUNDA, in autumn 2016 .
He has received a string of honors and grants most notably the prestigious “Young Elite” fellowship awarded to him by the Danish Arts Council in 2015.
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Composer and percussionist Arnold Marinissen (*1966) Has been a principal subject teacher at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam since 2008. He was artistic leader of Slagwerk Den Haag, and enjoys the classic percussion works of John Cage etc, parallel to exploring and composing new music for percussion. Today his compositions are broadly recognised and performed at festivals internationally.
Henrik Knarborg talks with him about being both a composer and percussionist, what motivates him, and what he finds important when managing his time.
Sound example are taken from:
Arnold Marinissen: ”Von Pferden, Gräsern, Sonnen, Menschen”
Arnold Marinissen: ”Totem I and II”
Arnold Marinissen: ”Iron Velvet”
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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)
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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
The first episode of Percussion Perspectives features Eugene Ughetti, artistic director of SPEAK Percussion, one of Australias leading organisations for contemporary music, and one of the most forward thinking ensembles when it comes to extending and redefining the practice of modern percussion. Eugene speaks about how SPEAK developed as an organisation, and how his musicianship has changed in line with his artistic development.
The music you hear is made by Thomas Meadowcroft – Cradles (2013) and The Great Knot (2011) – taken from this wonderful Mode Records release
and
Philip Samartzis/ Eugene Ughetti – ARRAY, released on Room40
This episode features composer Juliana Hodkinson in conversation with Henrik Knarborg Larsen about her work, which, among other things, involves collaborations with SPEAK Percussion.
Watch a video of her piece Lightness here.
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