After 25 years (and counting) of pushing the percussion quartet genre in new directions, Sō Percussion has become increasingly interested in creating songs with new collaborators. These co-composed collections of music—exemplified by our Grammy-winning album Rectangles and Circumstance with Caroline Shaw—allow us to bring all the resources of the percussion ensemble into a world of lyrics and storytelling.  

In these two weeks at the BAM Fisher, we start by featuring our long-running partnership with Shaw. Our show Who Turns Out the Light augments songs from Rectangles and Circumstance with selections from our previous album, Let the Soil Play its Simple Part, as well as an interlude from Caroline's cinematic pop duo, Ringdown (featuring co-songwriter and partner Danni Lee Parpan), plus recent compositions for Sō by members Jason Treuting and Eric Cha-Beach. 

The evening-length performance is a band-generated theatrical experience, featuring staging and design by director Mark DeChiazza. The musicians gradually place lights and reveal novel instruments as the show builds from a lone spotlight on Shaw singing "I'll Fly Away" to the ecstatic full ensemble performing thrilling up-tempo songs like "Sing On.” 

In the second week, we showcase new sets of music with Helado Negro and Kate Stables.

Our set with Roberto Carlos Lange, known as Helado Negro, builds off a common love for intricate rhythmic layers in our music. We rearrange well-known Helado Negro songs such as “Best for You and Me,” “Out There,” and “Echo Tricks Me” with marimba, drums, synth, vibraphone, and an assortment of toys. 

Our new songs feature Roberto’s dreamy voice over post-minimalist mallet music and driving synth and drums. The music is sometimes woody and organic, with marimba and woodblock driving a steady groove under the voice. At other times, shakers, noisy tin cans, and drums swirl with electronic samples. Roberto’s voice floats atop the percussive chaos.  

Kate Stables’ folk-inflected music in This Is the Kit often experiments with ambiguous and surprising rhythmic ideas. After arranging some of her songs, such as a marimba-based “Two Wooden Spoons” and “Inside Outside,” our new songs feature trickling chord progressions, a little ditty about the end of the world, some feverish Einstein on the Beach-style counting, and a traditional Irish ballad.  

The result of all these collaborations is something like chamber music, intermittently something like rock or pop, and sometimes pop filtered through a medieval motet. The sounds of percussion are those of modernity, noise, and rhythm; they are also the delicate strumming of a steel pan or the pure, hushed consonance of a bowed vibraphone.  

The most exciting moment in each is when Sō Percussion, Caroline Shaw, Kate Stables, and Helado Negro disappear—and some strange new band takes their place.