Press: Archetypes
Grammy Award-winning Third Coast Percussion, celebrated Brazilian guitarist Sérgio Assad, and his daughter, the vibrant vocalist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Clarice Assad, “a veritable musical dynamo” (San Francisco Classical Voice), join forces for a collaboratively written program conjuring a dozen universal archetypes — timeless characters shared by cultures around the globe.
Figures such as the Rebel, Lover, Magician, Jester, Hero, and Explorer come to life in 12 short works melding imaginative chamber music with Latin jazz rhythms.
The adventurous percussion ensemble’s vast color palette, Sérgio Assad’s unparalleled guitar mastery, and Clarice Assad’s diverse artistic contributions create striking musical portraits.
Boston Classical Review proclaimed “each piece cast a vivid impression of its respective theme…. The performers played with verve, revealing the music’s power to convey the traits underlying ancient, eternal ideas.”
Praised for its “commandingly elegant” performances (The New York Times), Third Coast Percussion won a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their 2016 Cedille label debut, Third Coast Percussion | Steve Reich, making them the first percussion ensemble to win a chamber music Grammy. The Chicago-based quartet’s critically acclaimed Paddle to the Sea, a 2018 Cedille release, was hailed as “an enormously enjoyable album . . . . the best percussion disc I’ve heard in ages” (The Arts Desk). Their late-2019 Cedille album Fields, featuring classical compositions by pop star Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange), is nominated for two Grammys at this year’s Awards.