Percussion music,” announced John Cage to a gathering of
artists and art lovers in Seattle 1937, “is a contemporary transition
from keyboard-influenced music to the all-sound music of the
future. Any sound is acceptable to the composer of percussion
music…”
Cage proved prophetic. In the early 20th century, writing music for
brake drums, rattles, tom-toms, gongs, and other rhythm instruments
offered composers an alternate route away from the usual path of
writing for symphony orchestras. Following the lead of Amadeo
Roldán‘s Ritmica No. 5 (1930) and the radical
Ionisation (1931) of Edgard Varèse, Cage, Henry
Cowell, and Lou Harrison composed percussion pieces that
remain breathtakingly orchestral in timbral invention. Listen to the
eerie, shivering howls rubbed from the piano’s strings in Cowell’s
“The Banshee” (1924) or the pageant of thumps, pings, and booms heard
in “Pulse” (1939) and Cage’s Third Construction (1940), and
you’ll hear yesteryear’s “noise” become today’s “music.”
Cornish College of the Arts’ festival Drums Along the Pacific (Thurs–Sun March 26–29, Cornish College PONCHO Concert
Hall, 710 E Roy St, various times, $7.50/$15 or $30/$45 for a festival
pass) reaffirms Seattle’s role in the history of percussion
music. In 1939, Cage, then a Seattle resident, and Lou Harrison
presented a series of all-percussion concerts in town and around the
Northwest.
The first evening of the festival honors Cowell (1897–1965),
whose treatment of the piano as a raw, occult percussion
instrument foreshadowed Cage’s prepared piano. Along with “The
Banshee” and “Pulse,” an all-star cast of musicians—including
Stephen Drury and the Pacific Rims Percussion
Quartet—perform “Aeolian Harp,” Homage to Iran, “The
Tides of Manaunaun,” and more. And don’t miss Friday’s Lou Harrison
concert, which includes Double Music, composed in collaboration
with Cage, and the whimsically titled Symfony #13. Harrison
(1917–2003) staked out a unique place in American music by
creating melodious yet challenging compositions influenced by Korean
court music, Cantonese opera, and the tuned percussion of Javanese
gamelan.
Dubbed a charlatan and a “destroyer of music,” Cage redrew
the border shared by noise, sound, and music by writing pieces for
turntables and radios, percussion ensembles, and—with the
revolutionary 4’33”—silence. The festival’s two-part Cage
marathon on Saturday includes Third Construction, Imaginary
Landscape No. 1 (for two variable-speed phonographs, piano, and
cymbal), Cheap Imitation, and much more. The festival concludes
on Sunday with Gamelan Pacifica reviving Harrison’s enchanting
Concerto for Piano with Javanese Gamelan. See www.cornish.edu/drums for a full
schedule.
Finally, don’t miss the Tony Grasso Saxophone? Quartet! (Fri
March 27, Egan’s Ballard Jam House, 9 pm, $10), whose unusual
punctuation alludes to the presence of a single trumpet among a trio of
saxophones. 
