Sō Percussion
with Caroline Shaw, voice
with Caroline Shaw, voice
Thursday, April 20, 2023, 7:30pm
Zellerbach Hall
From the Executive and Artistic Director
As we move into the final weeks of the season, Cal Performances’ programming shows no signs of slowing down; indeed, April is traditionally one of our busiest months, and this year is certainly no exception.
During a period that begins with this season’s visit by the Bay Area’s legendary Kronos Quartet, and concludes with the highly anticipated West Coast premiere of Michel van der Aa’s chamber opera Blank Out starring Swedish soprano Miah Persson—who just made an impressive appearance with The English Concert in Handel’s Solomon at Zellerbach Hall—Bay Area audiences can look to Cal Performances for an ambitious lineup of live performances that few programs in the world can rival.
Also in store this month—and continuing a tradition that dates to the late 1960s—the beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a crown jewel among American companies, returns to campus for its annual residency. Three programs this year feature captivating dance from Artistic Director Robert Battle, Jamar Roberts, and Kyle Abraham; eye-opening new company productions of works from dance masters Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor; the Bay Area premiere of a new production of Survivors, first created by Alvin Ailey in 1986 as a tribute to Nelson and Winnie Mandela; and a selection of Ailey classics, including the beloved Revelations. Each work on these programs reflects the timeless Ailey legacy of telling powerful and life-affirming stories through stunning dance.
Also part of our April schedule: the gifted harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani in his Cal Performances in-person debut; the Danish String Quartet in the third installment of its brilliant Doppelgänger Project, which pairs world premieres from a cohort of some of today’s most accomplished composers with major late-period chamber works by Schubert; new-music champion Sō Percussion in a concert featuring Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw as guest vocalist in the West Coast premiere of a luminous new set of songs Shaw co-composed with the members of the quartet; Latin jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera in an unmissable Bay Area appearance; George Hinchliffe’s devilishly irreverent and eclectic Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in its Cal Performances debut; and masters of sacred Renaissance choral music The Tallis Scholars in a return engagement at Berkeley’s intimate First Congregational Church.
As the season draws to a close, Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Human and Machine” programming will continue to take advantage of our unique positioning as a vital part of the world’s top-ranked public university. As we’ve done all season long, we’ll be engaging communities on and off campus to examine the evolution of tools such as musical instruments and electronics, the complex relationships between the creators and users of technology, the possibilities enabled by technology’s impact on the performing arts, and questions raised by the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in our society. A highlight of these activities has been our Human & Machine Song Contest, in which entrants submit original and previously unpublished songs or compositions integrating any technology (including AI) as a significant part of the creative process; the contest’s winners will be announced on April 22.
Given such a busy schedule, my boundless thanks and appreciation goes out to our tireless and dedicated staff, many of whom are currently (and equally) focused on not just this season, but also on the next. We are now deeply involved with putting the final touches on our plans to announce Cal Performances’ amazing 2023–24 season on April 18, and we can’t wait to share the details with you. Rest assured, we have an extraordinary season planned for you!
Thank you for joining us at Cal Performances. I look forward to seeing you in our halls throughout April and beyond.
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
As we move into the final weeks of the season, Cal Performances’ programming shows no signs of slowing down; indeed, April is traditionally one of our busiest months, and this year is certainly no exception.
During a period that begins with this season’s visit by the Bay Area’s legendary Kronos Quartet, and concludes with the highly anticipated West Coast premiere of Michel van der Aa’s chamber opera Blank Out starring Swedish soprano Miah Persson—who just made an impressive appearance with The English Concert in Handel’s Solomon at Zellerbach Hall—Bay Area audiences can look to Cal Performances for an ambitious lineup of live performances that few programs in the world can rival.
Also in store this month—and continuing a tradition that dates to the late 1960s—the beloved Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a crown jewel among American companies, returns to campus for its annual residency. Three programs this year feature captivating dance from Artistic Director Robert Battle, Jamar Roberts, and Kyle Abraham; eye-opening new company productions of works from dance masters Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor; the Bay Area premiere of a new production of Survivors, first created by Alvin Ailey in 1986 as a tribute to Nelson and Winnie Mandela; and a selection of Ailey classics, including the beloved Revelations. Each work on these programs reflects the timeless Ailey legacy of telling powerful and life-affirming stories through stunning dance.
Also part of our April schedule: the gifted harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani in his Cal Performances in-person debut; the Danish String Quartet in the third installment of its brilliant Doppelgänger Project, which pairs world premieres from a cohort of some of today’s most accomplished composers with major late-period chamber works by Schubert; new-music champion Sō Percussion in a concert featuring Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw as guest vocalist in the West Coast premiere of a luminous new set of songs Shaw co-composed with the members of the quartet; Latin jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera in an unmissable Bay Area appearance; George Hinchliffe’s devilishly irreverent and eclectic Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in its Cal Performances debut; and masters of sacred Renaissance choral music The Tallis Scholars in a return engagement at Berkeley’s intimate First Congregational Church.
As the season draws to a close, Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Human and Machine” programming will continue to take advantage of our unique positioning as a vital part of the world’s top-ranked public university. As we’ve done all season long, we’ll be engaging communities on and off campus to examine the evolution of tools such as musical instruments and electronics, the complex relationships between the creators and users of technology, the possibilities enabled by technology’s impact on the performing arts, and questions raised by the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in our society. A highlight of these activities has been our Human & Machine Song Contest, in which entrants submit original and previously unpublished songs or compositions integrating any technology (including AI) as a significant part of the creative process; the contest’s winners will be announced on April 22.
Given such a busy schedule, my boundless thanks and appreciation goes out to our tireless and dedicated staff, many of whom are currently (and equally) focused on not just this season, but also on the next. We are now deeply involved with putting the final touches on our plans to announce Cal Performances’ amazing 2023–24 season on April 18, and we can’t wait to share the details with you. Rest assured, we have an extraordinary season planned for you!
Thank you for joining us at Cal Performances. I look forward to seeing you in our halls throughout April and beyond.
Jeremy Geffen
Executive and Artistic Director, Cal Performances
About the Performance
Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part
Sō Percussion and Caroline Shaw
Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion combine forces for a powerful new original set of songs composed together. Shaw’s faultless ear for melody and harmony, combined with Sō’s rhythmic invention and compositional experimentation, make for a world of sonic richness that feels fresh and unique. It is a journey across the landscape of the soul, told through the medium of distinctly contemporary songs and represents Shaw’s debut as a solo vocal artist.
Shared lifetimes of voluminous musical and literary experiences traverse the spiritual realms of the Sacred Harp hymnal and the Book of Ruth; the oceanic ruminations of James Joyce; the American roots song “I’ll Fly Away” filtered through medieval plainchant; and even the pop group ABBA. Sonically, there is no other collaboration to compare it to. Shaw’s voice cycles through the gently intimate, to penetrating rapture, through layers of constructed counterpoint, while Sō Percussion’s nearly endless menagerie of instruments and techniques provides varying accompaniments of drums, piano, marimba, steel drums, electronics, tuned flower pots, toys, synthesizers, and much more.
The thrill in this collaboration lies partly in the realization that each entity adds dimensions to the other’s music, a process that revitalizes them both. Shaw gives voice and melody to the years of experimentation in rhythm, color, and complexity that define Sō’s work over two decades and more than 20 albums. In turn, Sō opens a world of sonic possibilities and rhythmic virtuosity that dramatically expands Shaw’s palette beyond the vocal and string writing for which she is best known.
In this collection of 10 songs, forces alternate between tightly crafted orchestrations and spontaneous duets between Shaw and each of the four members of So Percussion. The title song of the set features Shaw’s unadorned voice setting her own words, accompanied by Josh Quillen’s lyrical strumming on the steel drums. In “Lay All Your Love On Me,” Shaw and Adam Sliwinski concoct a stately motet for voice and marimba out of the chorus from ABBA’s famous hit song. In “Long Ago We Counted,” Jason Treuting unleashes cascades of his signature drumming underneath otherworldly loops of Shaw’s voice. With “Some Bright Morning,” Eric Cha-Beach simmers various layers of ambient drones under Shaw’s gradually unfolding synthesis of “I’ll Fly Away” and the 13th-century plainchant “Salve Regina.”
Other songs build layers of instrumentation as blocks of rhythm and sound underneath Shaw’s voice. “Find the Line” (“Other Song”) announces itself with a progression of flower pot harmony, which builds surprisingly into an uplifting, anthemic celebration of life and devotion. Two songs—“The Flood is Following Me” and “A Veil Awave Upon the Waves”—take their titles from lines in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Both are thick with layers of ambivalence and reflection. “Soon our Transient Comforts Fly” (“To the Sky”) builds interlocking rhythms reminiscent of Steve Reich, which Shaw elevates with a yawp of spiritual ecstasy from the Sacred Harp tradition.
Amid the Noise
Jason Treuting
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
—Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata”
Jason Treuting’s Amid the Noise began as a soundtrack, which morphed into our third album and then into a flexible set of live music. Now it is a communal music-making project that can occur with a flexible number of musicians in almost any combination.
The musical ideas in Amid the Noise are abstract: drones, melodies, rhythms, textures, patterns. Originally, So Percussion orchestrated them on the instruments we had in our studio, but we’ve since discovered that accordion, organ, or tuba might play a satisfying drone as well as bowed vibraphone. Like Terry Riley’s In C, this work maintains its identity and integrity even through wildly different realizations.
This modular concept allows us to conduct residencies that reach beyond percussion departments. Many kinds of students at a music school or conservatory can participate in Amid the Noise: vocalists, string quartets, wind and brass players, guitarists, and, of course, percussionists.