reviews
American Record Guide
July/August, 2008
"Kraft: An Encounter With the Music of William Kraft"
...Encounters XII is for harp and percussion...The Gabrielic Foray. Taken from that point of view, the percussion part shows a certain amount of humorous frustration along the way, hitting out on occasion and insisting on imitating the harp with a vaguely-pitched bell instrument. Actually, the two get along about as well as our cats, enjoying an occasional pitched battle and then ending up in each other's paws asleep on the couch...Finally, the relatively short Kandkinsky Variations for percussion and electronics [actually, all electronic instruments] is a work where the composer invites the players to interpret symbols rather than notes. The results are amusing and enjoyable. Altogether, this is an effectively performed and well recorded program of music by a fine and gratifyingly human American composer.
Words and Music (online)
July, 2007
Steven Schick's recent book The Percussionist's Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams is an extraordinary example of musical writing that comes from inside the action. Now comes the action itself, almost tangibly felt in the sound that pats, purrs and wallops out of a three-record set of percussion music by Xenakis (Mode 171/73). Included are the two solo pieces, four duos (Xenakis wrote twice for the unexpected coupling of harpsichord and percussion) and three works for percussion ensemble. Schick plays the solos and takes part in two of the duos (not those with harpsichord, which he relinquishes to colleagues); the ensemble pieces are performed by the group he has trained, red fish blue fish, playing without him...
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Percussive Notes
June, 2007
Crash - This multiple percussion solo deserves serious consideration
for recital programs. The composition takes about five minutes to perform,
requires a very small setup, and is extremely entertaining. The instrumentation
calls for a pair of "Lion cymbals" (played with the hands) and two pair
of hi-hats played with both feet. Two pages of performance notes clearly
describe the techniques needed, as well as the type of sound required to
perform each passage. One unique sound color is produced by wearing metal
thimbles on the index fingers, which are used to perform rhythmic figures
on the hand cymbals. This solo will be a challenge for all four appendages,
and uses styles found in the music of India, Africa, and American jazz and
rock. There are numerous challenges in technique and coordination between
the hands and feet. One of the challenges is in measure 40, which requires
playing half-note triplets with one foot, quarter notes with the other,
and playing quintuplets with the hand cymbals. The publisher's Website provides
a video of an excellent performance of this composition. Anyone viewing
this video will see that the piece is exciting and will likely want to take
on this challenge.
BBC Music Magazine
February, 2007
PERFORMANCE 5 stars *****
SOUND 5 stars *****
"Howard Goldstein is amazed by a revelatory Xenakis set"
Xenakis, of all the 20th century's radical rethinkers of musical parameters, managed to keep the strongest link with music's traditional ritualistic associations. This is perhaps most obvious in his percussion music, collected here in stunningly played and recorded performances by Red Fish Blue Fish, the resident percussion ensemble at the University of California, San Diego, directed by Steven Schick.
Persephassa (1969) marked the beginning of the composer's exploration of music's temporal dimensions with the same scientifically rigorous yet musically gripping approaches previously applied to pitch and form. Here six players encircle the audience; even in two-channel, Mode's engineers give us enough spatial cues to appreciate the final section's accelerating vortex of rhythmic layers (realised here with some discreet overdubbing) and sliding whistles (human and inhuman at the same time)...
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The Wire
January, 2007
...This set [Xenakis: percussion works] is much needed. In the Xenakis Primer I wrote for The Wire 259, I expressed doubts about his percussion works, but I now see that my quibbles were caused by recorded performances which sometimes haven't made the grade, and which have suffered from dubious fidelity. Mode never deal in anything less than impeccable sound and, alongside Schick himself, the San Diego percussion ensemble Red Fish Blue Fish play with a devotion to detail and inner fire...
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Percussive Notes
October, 2002
“Boom” is an advanced percussion duet that requires two sets
of bongos, three tom-toms and a bass drum shared by the two performers. Composers
Terry Longshore and Brett Reed, also known as the duo Skin & Bones, have
recorded the work on a CD also titled Boom. Longshore and Reed include specific
performance notes as well as a suggested instrument setup. The work is approximately
seven minutes in length and fluctuates between ostinato patterns layered over
a melodic statement and very polyrhythmic sections. The composers also include
two sections for improvisation.
The New York Times
May 11, 1999
The Bang on a Can Festival ended on Thursday evening with a spectacular concert of percussion music by Iannis Xenakis. Or should that be by Red Fish Blue Fish, the percussion ensemble that Steven Schick has formed at the University of California at San Diego? A string quartet playing Haydn is playing Haydn, but a percussion group playing Xenakis is really playing itself. The composer’s score is much less an imaginary object, to be realized well or not so well, than a means of facilitating a performance.
…The “Skins” part of the same work [Pleiades], played with mallets on drums, offered fascinating movements into and out of synchronization, made possible by individual click tracks for the six performers. But there is something to be said for musicians reacting to each other rather than to what they hear over their headphones, and “Persephassa” was the more impressive for its spontaneity and for the sense of musical electricity jumping from one member of the group to the next
The San Diego Union-Tribune
February 2, 1998
…while “Glide,” with Cox and marimba player Terry Longshore, sounded like an exotic cross between Balinese gamelan music and Appalachian folk tunes. Cox’s “Twitch,” with Longshore and Brett Reed on marimba, was a post-minimalist celebration of twitchy syncopations.
Yet for rhythmic verve, nothing beat "Boom," the program's final work. It was created by Longshore and Reed, the percussion duo known as Skin & Bones, in conjunction with Nugent and her five able dancers.
The movement was often fun, incorporating swivels, sways and cartwheels. But with their hammering mallets, Longshore and Reed achieved a percussive virtuosity that was itself a kind of choreography.
In this music and dance number, it was hard to take one's eyes off the musicians.
20th Century Music
January, 1998
The percussion duo 'Skin & Bones' is the latest ensemble offering from the flourishing percussion studio of Steven Schick at the University of California, San Diego. One of the most internationally active performers of new music at a department that was founded to promote the same, Professor Schick's students have furnished world-class talent not just to established institutions like SONOR, but to new ensembles currently making names for themselves. 'red fish blue fish', a percussion sextet formed just a few years ago, has already been featured at New York's 'Bang on a Can'. Both members of 'red fish blue fish', Terry Longshore and Brett Reed formed 'Skin & Bones' in 1994 to continue exploring new music, but this time with a much more intimate, and improvisatory edge.
The improvisatory nature of the duo's undertakings is evident on their first CD 'Boom' released this past summer, and produced by the duo with the help of some production friends culled from the ranks of fellow doctoral students at UCSD. Schick's influence is clear on this recording, especially in the precision and sense of joy the duo bring to the most complex materials. 'Skin & Bones' break music down into its most basic elements: rhythm and sound. Indeed, sound is at the heart of the duo's explorations, and according to Reed and Longshore, "the genesis of all we do." A compilation of six of the duo's best-loved works from concerts given over the last several years, 'Boom' offers music of the barest and most primitive elements, just as one might expect from a group entitled "skin and bones".
Three of the six titles on the disc are as monosyllabic as a drum beat, such as 'Tharn', 'Plank' and the title track 'Boom', which adds to the percussive, neo-primitive aura the duo obviously wish to promote in their first recording. All the pieces on this disc are longer than your average CD pop fare, but far shorter than standard classical offerings. Ranging from 7 up to 13 1/2 minutes, these tracks require a longer attention span than the MTV generation can generally muster, but the results of the CD are remarkable. Shying away from the obvious percussion excesses on record, from Var*se's 'Ionisation' to Reich's 'Drumming' this duo revel in simplicity, and the variable nature of the simplest pattern.
'Tharn' the first track, offers an opening of delicate vibes, sometimes verging on "mod" jazz, with subtle texture shifts and occasional drum riffs at home in any Beat's sonic universe. Cool bongos will leave the most abject listener crying out for a dry martini and cigar. The piece wanders a bit toward the middle, when Brett leaves his vibes it loses its cool, clear feel and moves into a more mathematical space, though one never tires following the miniature themes moving back and forth between players. This opener leaves no doubt in the listener that this is truly a duo.
The title track 'Boom', ranges far from the sheer volume its name would imply. Hypnotic and relentless, there is less of a dynamic breadth and melodic movement than 'Tharn', 'Boom' relies on the pleasure inherent in the beat, the groove, and these performers' virtuosic ability to manipulate each. '...yeah, no...' begins like a rock solo gone terribly wrong, maturing slowly through an abundance of overlapping Latin-inspired rhythms. Almost disappearing at one point, '...yeah, no...' reappears in the sound-world of the kitchen sink, with what sounds like a solo straight off the earthen and glassware (though the instrument lists it as further out in the garage -- with brake drums, a gear cog and cowbells).
'Slatdance' is the most haunting of the works, in a neo-primitive sort of way, and yet at the same time it is the starkest, using only one timbre throughout. Here both percussionists use the same marimba, improvising interweaving melodies against the steady flow of a repeated motive. Also the most melodic tracks on the CD, the tunes which populate 'Slatdance' are sublty complex in their slightly varied repetition, creating an almost subdued result. There is more than a hint of minimalism here, but the performers don't get stuck too long on any one idea. The piece doesn't evolve so much as sweep across the listeners consciousness, building and dying away at irregular intervals. Each time it renews itself, it seems as if the material has emerged stronger for the brief silence.
The track, 'Plank' is aptly named. Crisp, non-resonant, it is exactly how you'd expect your lumber to sound. The strange "distant" quality of the wood slats that serve as impromptu instument make this piece oddly distant, as if you're lisening to it though a thin wall, or across the alley from your neighbor's stereo. There is a faint Asian flavor to the sparseness of the piece, the single timbre highlighting the movement. 'Mixing Bols' continues the Asian theme, though this time with a bit of bite, using temple gongs, Chinese tom-toms and assorted noisemakers, like shakers and Native American drums.
The effect of subtly evolving rhythms eventually begins to wear slightly thin. While one is left desiring less drive and more reflection, the beat of this CD pushes ever forward, right up to its closing seconds.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Night & Day - June 5, 1997
*** (Three Stars)
On its debut, Skin & Bones, a percussionist duo that includes UCSD music
students Terry Longshore and Brett Reed, plays a mixture of avant-garde and
lounge music that will likely appeal to both trained musicians and the cocktail
crowd. Although the complex bongo rhythms of the title track are impressive,
it's the clanging bells in "...yeah, no..." and the various self-made
gongs in "Mixing Bols" that give the album its eccentric energy.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
June 24, 1997
The concert’s most recent work, “Double Triptych” (1984), was also the most amusingly experimental. Flutist [Lisa] Cella and percussionist Terry Longshore (on vibraphone and bongo drums) adroitly presented “Triptych’s” three bustling movements and three sleepy “anti-movements,” which were as contrasting as day and night.
According to Sollberger, each “anti-movement” stops with “a sudden sound, almost like an alarm clock going off.” His score leaves it to the performers to choose the sounds that serve as wake-up calls.
Longshore opted to pop balloons, chop nuts and dried beans in a blender, and ram an electric engraver inside an aluminum can. It was a performance that listeners won’t soon forget.
The New York Times
June 4, 1996
…It began with George Antheil’s “Ballet Mécanique,”…played with tremendous energy by Red Fish Blue Fish, a skillful ensemble from the University of California at San Diego. During the performance, a silent experimental film of the 1920’s by Fernand Léger was projected, just as Antheil had intended.
Red Fish Blue Fish closed the marathon with an arresting performance of Steve
Reich’s “Drumming,” a manifesto of Minimalism from 1971,
an hourlong, ritualistic mass of overlapping rhythms for bongos, marimbas,
glockenspiels and voices.
