FREE VIRTUAL EVENT Left Edge Percussion "Stress and Flow"

Left Edge Percussion, directed by Terry Longshore, will perform “Stress & Flow,” an evening of new percussion music on Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 7:30pm. The virtual concert will be livestreamed from the Southern Oregon University Music Recital Hall stage over the Oregon Center for the Arts YouTube Channel: youtube.com/OregonCenterForTheArts

The concert will open with Josh Gottry’s Quintic, the winning composition from the 2020 Left Edge Percussion Composition Competition, selected from 83 competition entries, coming from 18 countries on five continents! Quintic, meaning “of the fifth degree”, is an exploration of the number five within a percussion chamber ensemble. 

Composer Molly Joyce’s Uniformity explores a desire for such through a pitch to non-pitch process, seeking to realize its complexities, opportunities, and impossibilities. The motive to explore “uniformity” comes from the composer’s personal experiences and explorations into the social model of disability, which states that disability is caused by the way society is organized rather than by a person’s impairment or difference, and in Joyce’s opinion illustrates how human uniformity is perhaps an impossible and flawed undertaking.

Left Edge Percussion members Jade Hails and Bobby Odle will perform their arrangement of the third movement of Astor Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango, Nightclub 1960. Piazzolla described the piece thusly: “This is a time of rapidly expanding international exchange, and the tango evolves again as Brazil and Argentina come together in Buenos Aires. The bossa nova and the new tango are moving to the same beat. Audiences rush to the night clubs to listen earnestly to the new tango. This marks a revolution and a profound alteration in some of the original tango forms.”

Next on the concert program will be Metal for Pieces of Wood by Ivan Trevino, featuring drum set soloist Delaney Jai along with four marimbas played by the other members of the ensemble. Trevino writes: “Metal for Pieces of Wood places the metal world into the concert music space, and I think the name of the piece is indicative of this. I also think it's interesting that metal fans really enjoy classical music. Virtuosity and technique are often emphasized in metal, and metalheads see those traits in classical musicians as well. I'm not sure the feeling is always mutual, but I for one think metal can be a genre of amazing depth and musicianship.”

Also featured will be Left Edge Percussion’s 2020 video-recorded performance of BEND, a captivating quartet played on two marimbas composed by Third Coast Percussion member Peter Martin. The composition features many unusual sounds including playing with the mallet handles, scraping the ends of the bars with knurled sticks, and bowing the bars. Recorded at the Jefferson Public Radio Studio by Eric Teel, and video recorded by SOU Digital Cinema Alumna Audrey Sliger, the featured performers are: Mitchell Carlstrom, Jade Hails, Emily Lindley, and Gabriel Nordquist-Palmer. 

The concert will close with a performance of Alejandro Viñao’s virtuosic work in three movements, STRESS & FLOW, for percussion quartet and electronics. According to the composer, “Stress and flow, bright and dark, and light and shadow are all descriptions of the juxtapositions and contrasts that characterize this work and are arrived at through various rhythmic processes and the use of electronic means to produce new sound worlds. These sound worlds are not meaningful in themselves but work as an extension of the sound of the percussion instruments featured in this composition.”

There is no charge to view the virtual concert. To watch or listen to the concert, simply go to the Oregon Center for the Arts YouTube Channel at 7:30pm on Thursday, May 6 and click on the concert live stream. A recording of the live stream will be available on the OCA YouTube Channel for public viewing at any time.

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

Left Edge Percussion is a contemporary percussion group in residence at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University, led by artistic director Terry Longshore. The group tours and performs throughout the Northwest and actively collaborates on innovative projects with composers and artists of various media. The members of the group have been featured around the globe at prestigious festivals, competitions, conferences, and workshops and bring a diverse array of influences and collective energy to the ensemble. Left Edge Percussion has commissioned, co-commissioned, or premiered works by Joseph Bertolozzi, David Bithell, David Crowell, Josh Gottry, Bryan Jeffs, Molly Joyce, Ivan Trevino, Alejandro Viñao, and Drew Wright.

In addition to regular performances at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University, recent Left Edge Percussion performances include the Teatro Principal in Guanajuato, Mexico, the Center for New Music in San Francisco, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, Gold Lion Arts in Sacramento, Northwest Percussion Festival, Britt Music & Arts Festival, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show, Hipbone Studio in Portland, Ashland World Music Festival, the Oregon Fringe Festival, and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). In 2020 Left Edge Percussion was invited to perform at the Bang on a Can Long Play Festival in New York City, and the Other Minds 26 Festival in San Francisco, both postponed due to COVID-19.

2020–21 Left Edge Percussion members include Delaney Armstrong, Jade Hails, Bobby Odle, and Parker Stockford.

Terry Longshore is a percussionist whose genre-crossing work exhibits the artistry of the concert stage, the spontaneity of jazz, and the energy of a rock club. Based in Ashland, Oregon, he maintains an energetic career as an educator, performer, and composer. He serves as Professor of Music and Director of Percussion Studies at the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University, where he directs Left Edge Percussion and is Chair and Graduate Coordinator of the Music Program.

Whether collaborating with multi-media artists, composing live music for dance and theatre, or premiering works by today’s most ground-breaking composers, Terry Longshore brings a dynamic voice to every musical encounter. He is the co-artistic director of flute and percussion duo Caballito Negro and multi-media duo Left Edge Collective, and is a member of the Portland Percussion Group and Flamenco Pacifico. He has performed extensively with ensembles Skin & Bones, Conundrum, Sonoluminescence, and red fish blue fish, and has performed at numerous festivals and concert series including the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, the Britt Music & Arts Festival, the Transplanted Roots International Percussion Symposium (Montreal and Guanajuato), Musik i Väst Festival (Sweden), the Cabrillo Music Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Festival of New American Music, the Northwest Percussion Festival, The Oregon Fringe Festival, Center for New Music (San Francisco), and numerous times at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention (PASIC). His compositions for percussion have been performed at festivals and competitions throughout North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Longshore has premiered over 100 compositions for solo percussion, percussion ensemble, chamber ensemble, symphony orchestra, and the theatre. With nearly 100 tracks on Spotify and other music platforms, his recordings include multiple CDs for composer Mark Applebaum on the innova and Tzadik labels, the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis on Mode Recordings, music of percussion maverick William Kraft on Albany, and Michael Gordon’s Natural History on Cantaloupe Music. He also champions new solo and chamber works for percussion by commissioning, organizing, and participating in consortium commissions for works from a diverse body of composers. Recent projects include collaborations with and commissions by composers Rajna Swaminathan, Joby Talbot, Aaron Garcia, Susanna Hancock, Finola Merivale, Emma O’Halloran, Shruthi Rajasekar, Steven Snowden, Annika K. Socolofsky, Ivan Trevino, Molly Joyce, Alejandro Viñao, Bryan Jeffs, Jared Brown, Jodi French, David Crowell, Mark Applebaum, Peter Garland, Eugene Koshinski, Robert Honstein, Wally Gunn, Erik Griswold, Elliot Cole, and Roshanne Etezady. Terry Longshore is a Marimba One Vibe Artist, a Yamaha Performing Artist, and an artist endorser for Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth Sticks and Mallets, Remo Drumheads, Gon Bops Percussion, and Beato Bags. He is a member of the Black Swamp Percussion Education Network, and is a trained HealthRHYTHMS facilitator.

Terry Longshore holds bachelor’s degrees from the California State University at Fresno (Business Administration – Computer Applications and Systems) and Sacramento (Music – Percussion Performance) and earned the master’s and doctoral degrees in Contemporary Music Performance from the University of California, San Diego. His education includes significant study of Spanish flamenco and the classical music of India, including study at the Ali Akbar College of Music. His teachers include Steven Schick, Daniel Kennedy, Swapan Chaudhuri, Ronald Holloway, David Glyde, Chuck Flores, and Kartik Seshadri. He enjoys fly fishing, cycling, hiking, and especially traveling the world with his wife Jennifer and hanging out with his children, Madeleine and Maxwell.