David Skidmore is a founder of Third Coast Percussion, which was established in Chicago in 2005. Although a percussion quartet may not be as easily visualized as a string quartet, he says it one of the ensemble's great strengths: his group can draw on millennia of instruments from the six inhabited continents of the globe, making one Third Coast Percussion concert look, and sound, completely different from the next.
Third Coast Percussion will perform a major modern work, Resounding Earth, at Western Michigan University Wednesday night. The composer, Augusta Read Thomas, developed the piece out of her fascination for tintinnabulation, or, the sound patterns of bells. Written with Third Coast Percussion in mind, Skidmore says it is a modern masterpiece for percussion, which reveals new depths each time it is performed.
