Chicago-based percussionist and composer Glenn Kotche has been called one of the most exciting, creative and promising composers and performers in modern music, receiving international attention for his "unfailing taste, technique and discipline" (Chicago Tribune). He has written pieces for world-renowned ensembles including Kronos Quartet, The Silk Road Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, So Percussion and eighth blackbird, and his compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall and Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, among other prestigious venues worldwide. Cantaloupe Music will release Adventureland, Kotche's first solo album since 2006's Mobile (Nonesuch Records) and the first album of his compositions for ensembles, today, March 25.
The genesis of Adventureland began when Kotche attended a Kronos Quartetconcert in 2006. Afterwards, he set out to write a string quartet; eventually, the scope of the project morphed into a kaleidoscopic amusement ride of strings, gamelan, electronics and Kotche's vast arsenal of percussion instruments. "For the string quartet, I was banging my head against the wall for ideas," Kotche remembers, "and the solution didn't really come to me until I sat down at the drums. I realized, 'Hey-four voices, four limbs!' So I made the cello my right foot, the viola my left foot, and took it from there. When I transposed that, I had the first three movements of Anomaly." Kotche premiered Anomaly with Kronos Quartet at the 25th Anniversary San Francisco Jazz Festival in 2007. The piece's seven movements serve as the connective?tissue that binds Adventureland into a cohesive whole. From the wild ride of Triple Fantasy (an ingeniously spliced suite of performances by Kronos Quartet and Chicago's eighth blackbird ensemble, embellished with various field recordings) to the playfully pop-like gamelan arrangement? of The Traveling Turtle, the recording maps an intense and fertile period of growth in Kotche's artistic vision. It's capped off by the chilling, at times even macabre five-part piece The Haunted (for "two pianos vs. percussion"), which features Lisa Kaplan, Doug Perkins, Matthew Duvall and Yvonne Lam.Videos