“Blindnesses” by Isaac Schankler

Performed by Third Coast Percussion

Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore

Blindnesses is scored for four percussionists— sharing one vibraphone— and electronic sound processing. The electronic component of the piece at times adds a cavernous artificial resonance to the sound, while at other times, it plays back distorted fragments of music performed by the live musicians earlier in the piece. The four percussionists- whose movements must be meticulously choreographed to perform together on a single instrument- create their own stark sonic contrasts with a variety of mallets and acoustic pitch bending effects.

Isaac Schankler is a composer, pianist, accordionist and electronic musician based in Los Angeles. He writes music inspired by improvisation, indeterminacy, repetition, language, narrative, and puzzles, creating work that is ‘experimental’ while still engaging with the foundational elements of music: harmony, melody, time, timbre; music that is ‘beautiful’ while still allowing space for more unsettling experiences: uncertainty, anxiety, humor, horror.

“Being close to someone can mean agreeing not to see parts of them, and in some sense Blindnesses is about the absences that this mutual understanding contains.” – Isaac Schankler

Hailed by The New Yorker as “vibrant” and “superb,” Grammy-winning quartet Third Coast Percussion explores and expands the extraordinary sonic possibilities of the percussion repertoire, delivering exciting performances for audiences of all kinds. Formed in 2005, Third Coast Percussion has developed an international reputation with concerts and recordings of inspiring energy and subtle nuance.

These “hard-grooving” musicians (New York Times) have become known for ground-breaking collaborations across a wide range of disciplines, including concerts and residency projects with engineers at the University of Notre Dame, architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, astronomers at the Adler Planetarium, and more. The ensemble has also designed free iPhone and iPad apps that allow audience members to create their own musical performances and take a deeper look at the music performed by Third Coast Percussion.

The members of Third Coast Percussion —Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and David Skidmore—hold degrees in music performance from Northwestern University, the Yale School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory, and Rutgers University. Third Coast Percussion performs exclusively with Pearl/Adams Musical Instruments, Zildjian Cymbals, Remo Drumheads, and Vic Firth sticks and mallets.