Bobby Previte: Terminals So Percussion feat. John Medeski

• 1 TERMINAL 1 (feat. Zeena Parkins) 17:09
• 2 TERMINAL 2 (feat. Greg Osby) 14:54
• 3 TERMINAL 3 (feat. Nels Cline) 16:58
• 4 TERMINAL 4 (feat. Bobby Previte) 11:59
• 5 TERMINAL 5 (feat. John Medeski) 16:36
• Total Runtime 01:17:36

Info for Bobby Previte: Terminals

Drummer, composer, bandleader and improviser Bobby Previte is known for his voluminous contributions to New York’s legendary downtown experimental music scene – an immensely fertile period in the 1980s that saw the likes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass breaking new ground with Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, Bang on a Can and many more.

Now with nearly four decades under his belt as a creative force behind the drumkit, Previte has assembled a dream team of musicians from the jazz, indie rock and classical worlds to create TERMINALS, a luminous project consisting of five concertos for percussion ensemble and soloists, each inspired by the schematic-like terminal maps that Previte has noticed in airports around the world. The eternally adventurous So Percussion accompanies throughout, as Nels Cline (Wilco), Zeena Parkins, Greg Osby and John Medeski (Medeski Martin & Wood) take turns in the forefront to deliver an electrifying part-composed, part-improvised workout spanning two vinyl pieces.

TERMINALS is a thrilling and prolific meeting of the classical and the improvised worlds. The work exists in five discrete movements in the tradition of the concerto form - one movement for each of five master improvisers supported by a classical percussion ensemble.

Airport terminals have fascinated the composer for as long as he can remember. As a young boy, Previte used to sneak out onto the runway of his hometown airport in Niagara Falls and would lie down on the grass for hours as the jets thundered their take-offs directly overhead.

Flipping through an in-flight magazine one day in 2002, Previte, struck by how the shapes of the Terminal Maps pictured in the back suggested set-ups for percussion pieces, conceived TERMINALS.

The complete 90-minute piece places standard orchestral percussion instruments (timpani, snare drum, triangle) alongside those that were codified into 20th Century percussion literature (brake drums, anvils, almglocken), regional instruments highly associated with folk music (cuica, spoons, talking drum, timbales), electronic percussion (drum machine), and other unclassifiable elements (bullwhip), to fashion an indelible landscape. Pitting the precise percussion ensemble against the uncontrollable improviser, the inherent paradox in the concerto form is dramatically heightened in an attempt to reconcile the ever-fascinating comic book conundrum: What happens when an irresistible force meets an immoveable object?

TERMINALS is designed to create a landscape suited to each improviser. The concerto for Zeena Parkins’ harps features a lyrical steel drum section and a pitch shifted, processed vibraphone. John Medeski’s concerto splits the percussion into a huge composite trap drum set, matching the power of the Hammond. And the piece for Trap Drums engages the theatrical. It is a kind of homage to everything associated with the modern drum set - from making music out of the mistake of a dropped stick, to a development of the traditional drummer count-off, and even including a real time set up and soundcheck of a drum set onstage - a 'see the blueprints' moment - while the other percussionists continue playing the piece. In TERMINALS, motifs and orchestrations re-occur and are re-orchestrated and transformed from concerto to concerto, unifying the separate sections into one meta-form.

The studio recording of TERMINALS will allow us to control all of the many sonic forces at play in this piece, and will be the definitive version of this work.

Bobby Previte, drums, percussion
So Percussion

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