Third Coast Percussion and Cathie Boyd Team Up For SEE YOU LATER Featuring Three Remarkable Composers

Third Coast Percussion, the acclaimed young ensemble from Chicago, joins forces with Glasgow's Cathie Boyd and her arts organization, Cryptic, for "See You Later", an evening of new music presented visually as a staged concert. "See You Later" asks the question, what if you could see music? Where else but the fertile soil of Peak Performance could such a daring enterprise bloom?

Third Coast Percussion (David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, Sean Connors) were fans of composer David T. Little and commissioned his powerful Haunt of Last Nightfall inspired by the 1981 massacre in El Salvador. They approached Peak Performances' executive director, Jedediah Wheeler, about performing it in the acoustic perfection of the Alexander Kasser Theater. Wheeler connected Third Coast with Cathie Boyd, artistic director of Cryptic. Her 2014 production of Virginia Woolf'sOrlando at Peak Performances dazzled audiences and critics alike. Boyd's passion for reimagining music performance matched the needs of Third Coast Percussion: a staged concert in which music, lighting, films and staging come together to ravish the senses.

Those senses will be treated to the World Premiere of The Other Side of the River, a new work from the prolific and versatile Gavin Bryars. His wide-ranging talent includes opera, chamber pieces choral music and jazz. The novelist, Michael Ondaatje has said, "The music of Gavin Bryars falls under no category. It is mongrel, full of sensuality and wit and it is deeply moving." The Other Side of the River was commissioned by Peak Performances and the University of Notre Dame especially for Third Coast Percussion. "See You Later" also includes a favorite from the Third Coast Percussion repertoire, the tender and gentle Apple Blossom. These two works surround David T. Little's Haunt of Last Nightfall.

David T. Little read Mark Danner's 1993 New Yorker story "The Truth About El Mozote" about the 1981 massacre in El Salvador that claimed as many as 1,000 victims and the grisly story remained sporadically told. Little couldn't get the story out of his head and eventually found a way to honor the victims-through music. Haunt of Last Nightfall takes us, step by step, through the events of the day, to chilling effect.The New York Times recently reported that just this summer, a court in El Salvador struck down the amnesty provisions that have protected the perpetrators of the massacre for 35 years after the fact. Justice is finally catching up to the testimony of journalism and music. This is echoed in the title's back story. It comes from the Uruguayan political writer Eduardo Galeano who wrote "History never really says goodbye. History says, see you later."

Honored with a Citation for Excellence from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Peak Performances continues to reward its audience by presenting daring, world class entertainment at an affordable (and astonishing) $20 ticket.
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