When a Critic Hosts the Premiere
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Zachary Woolfe
February 14, 2020

“Please silence your cellphones.”

There are few phrases I hear more often in my life as a music critic. But it was strange — like a child playing dress-up — to speak the sentence myself, and in the incongruous setting of my own living room on a rainy evening earlier this week…

On October 14 at Bowling Green State University, Mantra Percussion gives the US premiere of Michael Gordon's percussion sextet, Timber — followed by a North American tour that includes the Canadian premiere on October 22 at the X Avant Festival (with indie rock-duo Buke & Gass).

The new work, an evening-length tour de force scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level…

On October 14 at Bowling Green State University, Mantra Percussion gives the US premiere of Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet, Timber — followed by a North American tour that includes the Canadian premiere on October 22 at the X Avant Festival (with indie rock-duo Buke & Gass).

The new work, an evening-length tour de force scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level…

Available now on iTunes and (in stunning wooden case) at Cantaloupe Music. Listen to NPR’s All Things Considered review.

Timber’s wooden CD case

a 10min video about Timber

On August 30, Michael Gordon’s new percussion sextet, Timber, is released in a very cool wooden CD case on Cantaloupe Music, but is available now for download through iTunes…

Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet Timber, “six players, six two-by-fours, one hour of aural hypnosis” (TimeOut NY) is toured from Canada to Ireland to Germany and beyond by co-commissioners Slagwerk Den Haag and Mantra Percussion.

• 8 March Muziekgebouw — Amsterdam (SDH)
• 9 March Vancouver New Music — Canada (MP)
• 15 March Maerzmuzik — Berlin (SDH)
• 21 March den Toonzal — Den Bosch, Holland (SDH)
• 7 April Music Biennale Zagreb — Croatia (SDH)
• 30 April TimberRemixed — Brooklyn, NY (MP)
• 4 May Drogheda Arts Festival 2013 — Louth, Ireland (MP)
• 26 May Landgoedconcerten Oranjewoud — Langezwaag, Holland (SDH)

Recognized by The New Yorker Magazine as one of the ten most memorable performances of 2012, Timber is a mesmerizing and unique evening-length work…

On November 14 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the percussionists of the San Francisco Contemporary Players perform Michael Gordon’s acclaimed, hypnotic, epic concert-length work Timber for 6 percussionists.

Scored for six graduated, amplified, wooden simantras (2x4s) the work brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level. In this work, Gordon shapes the music in both polyrhythmic and dynamic waves of textures — often each players’ hands are in separate rhythmic ‘worlds’, each traversing a different dynamic contour from loud to soft to loud, similar in some respects to his solo for percussion, XY…