Yellow Barn Opens Season with So Percussion

PUTNEY, VT – Yellow Barn Music Festival will open its 40th anniversary season this summer with a bang, as its Big Barn concert hall in Putney rocks with the sounds of the Brooklyn-based percussion ensemble, So Percussion, a well known quartet of young men who enjoy hitting things – drums, glockenspiels, toy pianos, coffee cups, metal pipes and more. The group will perform at Yellow Barn on Sunday, June 21 at 8 p.m., presenting works by Cenk Ergun, Nicole Lizee, John Cage and So Percussion. Tickets, at $22, are available by calling 802-387-6637, or at www.yellowbarn.org. So will also offer three free children’s concerts in the region on June 22 and 23.

So Percussion is well known in southern Vermont, having been in residence at Yellow Barn in 2004, then conducting a school year-long residency at Brattleboro Union High School in 2004-05, followed a few years later by the Music for Trains Project in Brattleboro and Bellows Falls in 2008. Since its first visit to the state, So has forged a weighty career and an international reputation, performing at such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and the Cleveland Museum of Art, and abroad as far afield as Australia and the Ukraine.

Billboard Magazine has called them “astonishing and entrancing” and The New York Times has lauded them as “brilliant”. However they are labeled, they are nothing if not imaginative, working with some of today’s most interesting composers (Steve Reich, Steven Mackey, Paul Lansky and others) and producing an impressive list of their own works as well. They have managed to bring the most ancient and traditional of instruments, the drum, into its own as a chamber and solo instrument, with possibilities limited only by their own creativity.

The group will also present three free, public children’s concerts in the area during their stay, at Kurn Hattin Homes in Westminster on Monday, June 22 at 12:45 p.m., at Mulberry Bush Daycare Center in Brattleboro on Tuesday, June 23 at 10 a.m., and at the Evening Star Grange in Dummerston Center on Tuesday, June 23 at 6:30 p.m. All are welcome at these lively, interactive, family-friendly events, with refreshments provided at the Grange concert in Dummerston. For information and directions, call 802-387-6637, ext. 101.

The Yellow Barn season continues with chamber music concerts each week through August 8, including a special 40th Anniversary Mountaintop Musicale at a grand garden estate near Walpole, New Hampshire upcoming on Saturday, June 27. For information and tickets, visit www.yellowbarn.org.

FOR THE CALENDAR / Public Service Announcement:

Sunday, June 21 – So Percussion in concert at Yellow Barn Music School & Festival, Putney, Vermont, 8 p.m. Works by this well known New York-based percussion quartet, and by John Cage, Cenk Ergun and Nicole Lizee. $22. For information and tickets, call 802-387-6637, ext. 107 or visit www.yellowbarn.org.

Monday, June 22 – FREE CHILDREN’S CONCERT with percussion ensemble So Percussion, 12:45 p.m., Kurn Hattin Homes, Westminster, Vermont. Presented by Yellow Barn Music School & Festival. Information: 802-387-6637, ext. 101

Tuesday, June 23 – FREE CHILDREN’S CONCERT with percussion ensemble So Percussion, 10 a.m., Mulberry Bush Daycare Center, Brattleboro, Vermont. Presented by Yellow Barn Music School & Festival. Information: 802-387-6637, ext. 101

Tuesday, June 23 – FAMILY CONCERT for kids and adults, with New York based percussion ensemble, So Percussion, Evening Star Grange, Dummerston Center, Vermont, 6:30 p.m. Learn how to hit things with other things! Learn about percussion music! Have fun! Refreshments provided. Presented by Yellow Barn Music School & Festival. Information: 802-387-6637, ext. 101


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