Mallet it be

STICK-UP ARTISTS The members of TCPQ come together for a little marimba action.

In early June, the Third Coast Percussion Quartet hit the small stage of the South Loop’s Sherwood Conservatory Recital Hall, and within 10 seconds everyone was paying closer attention to the booming rhythms of David Skidmore’s Ritual Music. The primal beats of tom-toms, a tambourine and, later on, marimbas took inspiration from African percussion, but the arrangement of this mad panoply of instruments pointed at conservatory training.

Who were these guys?

The group—Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Clayton Condon and Peter Martin, all in their late twenties—met at Northwestern, but officially organized in 2004 while in the Civic Orchestra. Each of them studied with Michael Burritt at NU, a noted soloist and composer in his own right, and both Skidmore and Martin point to Burritt’s rigor and enthusiasm as inspiration. “He takes the music very seriously and gives it the same care and attention that he gives to orchestral and solo music,” Skidmore says. Burritt also conducts the university’s Percussion Ensemble, which gives the students even more chances to learn new repertoire and blend a wide variety of sounds. Despite the quality of that group, though, “college is usually the last time you’ll play in a percussion ensemble,” jokes Martin.

Not only do they want to keep playing in a percussion ensemble, though, they want to expand the audience for their style of music. They’ve played gigs at the Empty Bottle and the Hideout, but also play in the more traditional homes of classical music. Skidmore says they don’t change their show much, despite the disparate venues. “We believe that people like good music if it’s played well,” he says. They might avoid some of their quieter works at a club gig, but that’s the only concession they’ll make.

Viewed one way, it’s strange there aren’t more groups like TCPQ on the musical landscape. “Every indigenous culture has had percussion,” says Martin, but classical composers began writing for piano, strings, woodwinds and brass. It’s only been in the last century that the percussion ensemble started to come into its own. Even with that sort of timespan, though, most listeners remain unaware of percussion ensembles.

That’s starting to change. “There is a tradition in place” for percussion ensembles, says Skidmore. The Canadian percussion group Nexus formed more than 30 years ago, the Hungarian group Amadinda has been together for 23 years, and the young members of New York’s So Percussion also have a devoted following.

The Chicagoans are trying to fit into this community through a sort of studied eclecticism. So Percussion does a lot of minimalism, says Skidmore, and has recorded Steve Reich’s landmark Drumming. TCPQ is trying to find composers who use world music styles, and others not so easily classifiable. One of their standbys is Ta and Clap by Nico Muhly, which is the rare percussion-ensemble work that refuses to settle into a groove. (The meteoric rise of Muhly, 26, already includes a retrospective concert at Carnegie Hall and a commission from the Chicago Symphony.) They’re also commissioning Aaron Travers, a Northwestern grad whose scores pack a lot of dissonance into very small amounts of time.

“We play music that we feel can bring audiences together in a way that no other music can,” says Skidmore. They have tours to Florida and California coming up, and are busy incorporating the ensemble into a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Building audiences is at the core of their mission, mostly because audiences still don’t know about them. With their chops, polish and youthful joy in performing, they’d seem to be the right guys for the job.

TCPQ plays Tuesday 24 at Rush Hour Concerts.