Program Notes

I began working on Timber in 2009 at the invitation of the Dutch-based dance group

Club Guy & Roni and the percussion ensembles Slagwerk Den Haag and Mantra

Percussion. I had written many orchestral works over the decade, from Decasia in 

2001 to Dystopia in 2007, and I wanted to clear my mind of pitches and orchestration.

For that reason, I decided early on that Timber would be for non-tuned percussion,

and that each percussionist would play one instrument only. I thought of composing

this music as being similar to taking a trip into the desert. I was counting on the stark

palette and the challenge ofsurvival to clear my brain and bring on visions.

I imagined that the six instruments would go from high to low, and that through

a shifting of dynamics from one instrument to the next, the group could make seamless

and unified descending or ascending patterns. After working on rhythmic sketches with 

Mantra Percussion in early 2009,1 went to Amsterdam in June to workshop my ideas

with Slagwerk Den Haag. I had “the plan” but was searching for the right instruments.

After some experimentation, Slagwerk’s Fedor Teunisse brought out a set of

wooden simantras. These slabs of wood, which looked like building materials from a

lumberyard, had a gorgeous sound, distinct enough that the clarity of the percussive 

hits could be heard; their deep resonance produced a complex field of overtones. With

inspiration from this discovery, I returned to New York to finish the music for Club

Guy & Roni’s extravaganza Pinball and Grace, which premiered in October of 2009.

Program notes by Michael Gordon

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Cover Jackson Pollock, Mural (detail),

1943, Gift of Peggy Guggenheim, reproduced with permission from the University

of Iowa

nga.gov/music
Program

Mantra Percussion

Celebrating Jackson Pollock’s Mural

NOVEMBER 19, 2017/3:30

WEST BUILDING, WEST GARDEN COURT

Michael Gordon (b. 1956)

Timber (2009), for six percussionists playing wooden simantras (two-by-fours)

The Musicians

Committed to honoring the past and expanding the future of percussion music, Mantra

Percussion brings to life new works for percussion by living composers, collaborates

with artists from diverse genres and styles, and questions what it means to communicate music with percussion instruments. Mantra Percussion engages new audiences

by challenging the standard concert format through performances that look toward

a grander artistic vision.

Since forming as an ensemble in 2009, Mantra Percussion has been featured

throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, including at the Brooklyn Academy of

Music’s Next Wave Festival, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Duke Performances, Los 

Angeles’s Redcat Theater, and on National Public Radio. After co-commissioning

Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet Timber, the group premiered it in the United

States in October 2011 and then toured it internationally.

Mantra Percussion has been hailed by the New York Times as “finely polished...

a fresh source of energy” and by TimeOut New York as “forward thinking”; the group

was praised by the New Yorker and TimeOut New York for presenting one of the ten

best classical performances of 2012. The ensemble recorded Aaron Siegel’s Science Is

Only a Sometimes Friend on Lockstep Records, Michael Fiday’s Hands On! on Innova 

Records, and more recently a double-CD album, Timber Remixed/Timber Live, on

Cantaloupe Music with twelve remixes ofMichael Gordon’s Timber by some of the

leading electronica artists today—Squarepusher,Johann Johannsson, Tim Hecker,

Fennesz, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Hauschka.