Scott Iwasaki
Sō Percussion, from left, Adam Sliwinski, Josh Quillen, Eric Cha-Beach and founder Jason Treuting, is known for creating new music through rhythmic experiments. The contemporary chamber-music quartet will perform Saturday at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.
Photo by Stefen Cohen
Sō Percussion’s mission is to “create a new model of egalitarian artistic collaboration that respects history, champions innovation and curiosity, and creates an essential social bond through service to our audiences and our communities.”
The chamber music ensemble, which is scheduled to perform on April 9 at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, does that through diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, said founder Jason Treuting.
“We talk about the music, nerdily, as a flexible instrumentational form of music,” he said. “In classical music, that means we try to discover anything new about the music we play.”
It also produces new interpretations of past works created by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ composers, working with non-male and non-white composers on each, and the New Music Equity Action Pledge, a program Sō Percussion co-founded to work actively against inequity and racism, Treuting said.
“It’s about putting forth the inclusive vibe,” he said.
Sō Percussion’s diverse approach to presenting its music also gives audiences a rare look “behind the scenes,” so to speak, Treuting said.
“We are playing new and contemporary pieces of music, and I think it’s interesting for an audience to see the way these sounds are made,” he said.
There is a mystery of the way a piece is played, but not a mystery to seeing the group hitting a flower pot with a stick during a performance, Treuting said.
“Everybody can imagine themselves experimenting with sounds, and everybody has some moment in time when they’ve gotten a pot out of the kitchen or made a funky sound on a wine glass during a dinner party,” he said. “I think as a group, we were psyched to organize those sounds with composer friends of ours, and, later, for ourselves, to bring what can be edgy, contemporary music into the world in a way that is inviting.”
The seeds of Sō Percussion sprouted in 1999, after Treuting and some of his friends met at the Yale School of Music.
“We were excited about the professor, Robert van Sice,” Treuting said. “He was a marimba player at the time, and we were all into checking out the instrument.”
Treuting and his classmates soon found camaraderie playing music together.
“We were assigned to play this pretty thick piece of chamber music and spent all the time in the music room putting it together,” he said. “We realized we loved working and being together. We would go out and grab drinks afterwards, and get together beforehand for coffee.”
Treuting’s sister, Jenise Treuting, named the ensemble after its members asked an abundance of friends and family for ideas.
Jenise Treuting, an English and Japanese translator, thought the calligraphy for the Japanese word “sō” was symbolic in its meanings — “to play an instrument,” “be successful,” “to move forward” and “to present to a leader or higher power.”
The name caught on, and the group quickly began commissioning works and asking their composer friends to write some new music for them, Treuting said.
“We moved our studio from New Haven to Brooklyn in 2003-04 and that’s where we’ve been ever since,” he said.
Josh Quillen, the quartet’s expert steel drum artist, officially joined in 2006.
“I first heard of Sō when I was an undergrad at the University of Akron and connected with them through a weird moment of serendipity,” he said.
Quillen played hand drums for a church choir near Akron that was run by the mother of Adam Sliwinski, who had joined Sō Percussion in 2002.
“After playing for the church choir, Adam’s mom asked if I had heard of the group, so I started looking into them,” he said. “One thing led to another, and I met Robert van Sice, when he came to the University of Akron for a master class.”
Soon afterward, Quillen transferred to Yale.
“A spot opened with Sō, and I started subbing in the group in February 2006, and then joined later that summer,” he said.
In another spark of serendipity, Sō Percussion’s Park City performance will include, “Amid the Noise,” the first song Quillen played with the group 16 years ago.
“It wasn’t a commission, and I didn’t have a prescribed part to play,” he said. “We were just adapting stuff for the steel pan and synthesizer.”
In addition, Sō Percussion, which also includes fellow member Eric Cha-Beach, will perform the program with members of the Park City High School music department, Quillen said.
“It’s wild to think about the fun journey I’ve been on with the group,” he said.
Park City Institute Presents Sō Percussion
When: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, April 9
Where: Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, 1750 Kearns Blvd.
Cost: $20 and $35
Phone: 435-655-3114
Web: parkcityinstitute.org
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