UCF Percussion with The Percussion Collective

FREE with UCF I.D. or if 18 & under if reserved by April 5 at 5 p.m.!

The UCF Percussion Ensemble performs pieces by Steve Reich, Lou Harrison and more followed by special guests The Percussion Collective performing “Seaborne,” a percussive art soundscape and visual celebration of our endangered oceans.

PERCUSSION FESTIVAL: FEATURED CONCERT

A day of workshops and performances culminates in a celebration featuring guest artist The Percussion Collective and the UCF Percussion Ensemble.

The Percussion Collective appears by arrangement with Kanzen Arts.

PROGRAM

UCF Percussion Ensemble

Mallet Quartet by Steve Reich

1. Fast
2. Slow
3. Fast

Suite for Violin and American Gamelan by Lou Harrison

1. Jhala I
2. Jhala II
3. Jhala III
4. Chaconne

Caitlin Pequignot, violin

Ionisation by Edgard Varése                    

The Percussion Collective

Seaborne by Garth Neustadter & Kjell Van Sice      

1. Above
2. At
3. Within

UCF PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE PERSONNEL

Thad Anderson, Director

THE PERCUSSION COLLECTIVE PERSONNEL

Robert van Sice, artistic director

ABOUT THE PERCUSSION COLLECTIVE

At the pinnacle of his legendary career, performer and pedagogue Robert van Sice has assembled a stunning collection of young artists who are reinventing the concert experience. The Percussion Collective transcends the medium of percussion through uncommon performance experiences that surprise and engage audiences at a profound emotional level. The hallmarks of van Sice’s musical approach—precise execution, sonic refinement, and dynamic onstage communication—are all on display in the most vivid manner to date. Drawing from an incomparably rich bouquet of talent, The Percussion Collective flexes in size offering exquisitely curated programs for an array of venues and settings. The fabulously successful ten concert inaugural tour of the United States in the Spring of 2018 featured the first performances of the newly commissioned Seaborne, an immersive multimedia work by Emmy Award-winning composer Garth Neustadter and videographer Kjell van Sice that celebrates the beauty of our world’s oceans.

The 2018-2019 season begins with the group’s first tour to China, featuring a performance of Seaborne in the new Shanghai Symphony Hall. Other highlights will include performances of the first orchestral showcase for The Collective, Drum Circles by Christopher Theofanidis. The work was commissioned by a consortium including the Aspen Music Festival, Baltimore Symphony, Colorado Symphony, and the Oregon Symphony, which will perform the world premiere in March conducted by Music Director Carlos Kalmar. Four members of The Collective and the orchestra’s own percussion section will surround the orchestra in a circle creating a spatial and theatrical effect. The Percussion Collective will also be presented by the Yellow Barn Music Festival at its Dallas venue, the Nasher Sculpture Center, performing Martin Bresnick’s Caprichos Enfaticos. This powerful work is based on Francisco Goya’s etchings depicting the horrors of war, and The Percussion Collective will be joined by Yellow Barn’s Artistic Director Seth Knopp for the occasion. This season will also feature the premiere of Stress and Flow, a major new work for percussion quartet and electronics by renowned Argentinian composer, Alejandro Viñao.

The roster of The Percussion Collective includes some of the world’s most esteemed and dynamic young voices in the art form. They are drawn from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Camerata Pacifica, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble as well as faculty members from universities such as Miami’s Frost School of Music, Michigan State University, the University of Massachusetts, Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, and the University of Kansas. Featuring players from Europe, Asia, and the US, this new generation of virtuosi represent the leading edge of innovation in concert conception and performance.

“In his hands, the marimba becomes a voice with richness of sound and expression that one would never expect from a percussion instrument.” – Journal de Geneve. Robert van Sice is one of the world’s foremost performers of contemporary music for marimba, having premiered over one hundred pieces including many of today’s seminal works for the instrument. In 1989 he gave the first solo marimba recital at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and subsequent recitals followed in Vienna’s Musikverein, London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, Paris’s Centre Georges Pompidou, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Tokyo’s Casals Hall, and dozens more. Many were broadcast by the BBC, Swedish Radio, Norwegian Radio, Radio France, WDR, and NPR. He has appeared as a soloist with Europe’s leading contemporary music ensembles such as London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps in Geneva and L’Itineraire in Paris. In 1997 he was appointed Director of Percussion Studies at the Yale School of Music and subsequently joined the faculties of the Curtis Institute and Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. His former students have won many prizes and are active in more than twenty countries. Van Sice has given hundreds of master classes at leading conservatories around the world.