The University of Michigan Museum of Art is in for a percussive time this Friday.

Sô Percussion performs at the UMMA on Saturday.

photo by Janette Beckman

The University Musical Society is presenting 2 shows by Sô Percussion, an inventive, experimental percussion group, in the apse of the museum.

An early show includes pieces by Steve Reich performed entirely in the apse, but the later show begins in the Apse and then proceeds to other areas of the museum.

A sample of their sound:

From the UMS press release:

"Since coming together at the Yale School of Music in 1999, Sô Percussion has been creating music that is by turns raucous and touching, barbarous and heartfelt. Realizing that percussion instruments can communicate all the extremes of emotion and musical possibility, it has not been easy music to define.

"Called 'astonishing and entrancing' by Billboard and 'brilliant' by The New York Times, the Brooklyn-based quartet’s innovative work with today’s most exciting composers and their own original music has quickly helped them forge a unique career. With an audience comprised of 'both kinds of blue hair...elderly matron here, arty punk there' (as The Boston Globe described it), Sô Percussion makes a rare, wonderful breed of music that both compels instantly and offers vast rewards for engaged listening. Edgy (at least in the sense that little other music sounds like this) and ancient (in that people have been hitting objects for eons), perhaps it doesn’t need to be defined after all.

"Not content just with breaking the boundaries of percussion music, they continually experiment to find new sounds. 'If you're sick of the sounds you've got, you go and find more,' says Josh Quillen, one of the group members. 'There's always something to hit or rub or whatever.'

"The group has taken this approach with them to countless educational programs, ranging from community talks to master classes with student percussionists and composers at Juilliard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Texas, the University of Toronto, The Moscow Conservatory, and many other schools. They’ve also commissioned dozens of composers, including such notables as David Lang and Paul Lansky to emerging talents Cenk Ergun, Dennis DeSantis and Suzanne Farrin, for unique repertoire that has been heard at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and The Knitting Factory in New York, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and Montreal’s Le National."

Before we go, one more sample: