Feb. 21 - Mar. 8, 2025: Third Coast Percussion Embarks on National Tour with Zakir Hussain, Part of 20th Anniversary

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Third Coast Percussion Embarks on 
National Tour with Zakir Hussain

Part of Third Coast Percussion’s 20th Anniversary Season,
Tour Brings World and Regional Premieres of a New Work by the Tabla Master,
Plus New Works by Jessie Montgomery, Jlin and Tigran Hamasyan

Multiple NYC Premieres in Carnegie Hall Program

Tour Dates:
February 21, 2025: Modlin Center for the Arts | Richmond, VA
February 23, 2025: University Musical Society | Ann Arbor, MI
February 27, 2025: Carnegie Hall | New York, NY
March 1, 2025: Green Music Center | Rohnert Park, CA
March 8, 2025: La Jolla Music Society | La Jolla, CA

Click Here to Explore TCP’s 20th Anniversary Microsite

Watch the 20th Anniversary Video

“Virtuosity and deft, precisely timed wit” – The Washington Post 

www.thirdcoastpercussion.com

Chicago, IL (November 14, 2024) – As part of their landmark 20th anniversary season, GRAMMY® Award-winning Chicago-based percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion (TCP) will embark on a nationwide tour with famed tabla player Zakir Hussain. Over five concert dates in February and March 2025, the tour brings world and regional premieres of Murmurs in Time, Hussain’s new work for tabla and percussion quartet, combining the beauty and complexity of Hindustani classical music with the singular sound world of Third Coast Percussion. The winner of four GRAMMY® Awards, among seven total nominations, Hussain is widely esteemed as one of today’s most influential musicians and a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement. The program also features three new works commissioned for TCP’s 20th anniversary: Jessie Montgomery’s piece Lady Justice, Jlin’s composition Please Be Still and Armenian jazz pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan’s three-movement work Sonata for Percussion.

The tour begins with a performance on Friday, February 21, 2025 at the Modlin Center for the Arts, University of Richmond (Virginia), featuring the world premiere of Hussain’s work. It continues on Sunday, February 23, 2025 as Michigan’s University Musical Society presents TCP and Hussain at the Rackham Auditorium in Ann Arbor. On Thursday, February 27, 2025, Carnegie Hall presents TCP and Hussain in a program at Zankel Hall, marking the New York premieres of all four works on the program. The tour concludes with two dates in California: at Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, CA on Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 7:30pm, and with La Jolla Music Society at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla, CA on Saturday, March 8, 2025 at 7:30pm.

TCP’s collaboration with Zakir Hussain represents one of several ambitious projects timed for the ensemble’s 20th anniversary season, which brings them into collaboration with leading musicians, choreographers and composers from around the world. Hussain’s Murmurs in Time, Jlin’s Please Be Still and Hamasyan’s Sonata for Percussion, along with a separate work by Montgomery, will be featured on a 20th anniversary album to be released on Chicago's own Cedille Records, celebrating the ensemble’s legacy of musical collaboration and artistic growth since its founding in 2005. Among its other season highlights, TCP will embark on a tour with Twyla Tharp Dance beginning in January 2025. In official observance of its 20th anniversary, the ensemble presents its own TCP Festival at Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago on June 28, 2025, with more details to be announced later in the season. A “TCP 20th” microsite is available at tcp20.thirdcoastpercussion.com with more information on the ensemble’s history and milestone engagements.

Third Coast Percussion / Zakir Hussain Tour Dates
Friday, February 21, 2025 at 7:30pm
Third Coast Percussion Performs Hussain World Premiere
Modlin Center for the Arts | Richmond, VA
Link: modlin.richmond.edu/events/page.html?eventid=22756&informationid=casData

Sunday, February 23, 2025 at 4:00pm
University Musical Society Presents Third Coast Percussion & Zakir Hussain
Rackham Auditorium | Ann Arbor, MI
Link: ums.org/performance/third-coast-percussion-zakir-hussain/

Thursday, February 27, 2025 at 7:30pm
Carnegie Hall Presents Third Coast Percussion & Zakir Hussain
Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall | New York, NY
Link: www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2025/02/27/Third-Coast-Percussion-0730PM

Saturday, March 1, 2025 at 7:30pm
Third Coast Percussion & Zakir Hussain
Weill Hall at the Green Music Center | Rohnert Park, CA
Link: gmc.sonoma.edu/third-coast_hussain/

Saturday, March 8, 2025 at 7:30pm
La Jolla Music Society Presents Third Coast Percussion & Zakir Hussain
The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center | La Jolla, CA
Link: theconrad.org/events/zakir-hussain-third-coast/

More About Third Coast Percussion
With nearly two decades of exciting and unexpected performances to its name, Chicago-based percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion (TCP) is the first percussion ensemble to win a GRAMMY® Award. Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2025, Third Coast recasts the classical musical experience with a brilliantly varied sonic palette, crafting music to “push percussion in new directions, blurring musical boundaries and beguiling new listeners” (NPR). In its latest of seven total GRAMMY® nominations, TCP’s 2023 album Between Breaths was nominated under Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance in the 2024 GRAMMY® Awards.

Highly collaborative in its commissioning process, TCP has commissioned and premiered new works from Augusta Read Thomas, Philip Glass, Missy Mazzoli, Jlin, Clarice Assad, Gemma Peacocke, Flutronix, Danny Elfman, Tyondai Braxton, Augusta Read Thomas, Devonté Hynes, Georg Friedrich Haas, Donnacha Dennehy, Glenn Kotche, Christopher Cerrone, and David T. Little, plus numerous up-and-coming composers through their Currents Creative Partnership program. Jlin’s Perspective, a TCP commission, was a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Besides putting its stamp on works by John Cage and Steve Reich, the quartet has created first recordings of commissioned works by Philip Glass, Augusta Read Thomas, Devonté Hynes, Danny Elfman, Gavin Bryars, Donnacha Dennehy, David T. Little and Ted Hearne – in addition to original Third Coast compositions. The ensemble won their GRAMMY® (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance) for their recording of Steve Reich’s works for percussion. They have received five additional GRAMMY® nominations as performers, plus a 2021 nomination as composers.

Passionate about connecting with its audience, Third Coast has been praised for “an inspirational sense of fun and curiosity” (Minnesota Star-Tribune). The ensemble has toured widely across the U.S. and four continents. Its four members are also accomplished teachers who have developed a wealth of K-12 workshops and family programming, plus educational partnerships benefiting thousands of Chicago students.

Third Coast has produced exciting new art through unlikely collaborations with engineers at the University of Notre Dame, architects at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, dancers at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and musicians of all genres. The quartet has served as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center (2013-2018) and Denison University (current).

With strong ties throughout Chicago, Third Coast has collaborated with such institutions as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the Uniting Voices Chicago choir, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Chicago Humanities Festival, Adler Planetarium, the University of Chicago and numerous Chicago-based composers.

The four members of Third Coast Percussion (Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore) met while studying percussion at Northwestern University and formed the ensemble in 2005. TCP has since been certified as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization in support of their vision. Members of Third Coast also hold degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Rutgers University, the New England Conservatory and the Yale School of Music.

Follow Third Coast on Instagram (@ThirdCoastPercussion), YouTube (@thirdcoastpercussion), TikTok (@thirdcoastpercussion), Twitter (@ThirdCoastPerc), Facebook (@Third Coast Percussion), and LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/third-coast-percussion)

More About Zakir Hussain
The pre-eminent classical tabla virtuoso of our time, Zakir Hussain is appreciated both in the field of percussion and in the music world at large as an international phenomenon and one of the world’s most esteemed and influential musicians. The foremost disciple of his father, the legendary Ustad Allarakha, Zakir was a child prodigy who began his professional career at the age of twelve, accompanying India’s greatest classical musicians and dancers and touring internationally with great success by the age of eighteen. His brilliant accompaniment, solo performance and genre-defying collaborations, including his pioneering work to develop a dialogue between North and South Indian musicians, have elevated the status of his instrument both in India and globally, bringing the tabla into a new dimension of renown and appreciation.

Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, Zakir’s contribution has been unique, with many historic and groundbreaking collaborations, including Shakti, Remember Shakti, Masters of Percussion, Planet Drum and Global Drum Project with Mickey Hart, Tabla Beat Science, Sangam with Charles Lloyd and Eric Harland, CrossCurrents with Dave Holland and Chris Potter, in trio with Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer, and, most recently, with Herbie Hancock.

As a composer, he has scored music for numerous feature films, major events and productions. He has composed three concertos, and his third, the first-ever concerto for tabla and orchestra, was premiered in India in September, 2015, by the Symphony Orchestra of India, premiered in Europe and the UK in 2016, and in the USA in April, 2017, by the National Symphony Orchestra at Kennedy Center. A Grammy award winner, Zakir is the recipient of countless awards and honors, including Padma Vibhushan, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the USA’s National Heritage Fellowship and Officier in France’s Order of Arts and Letters. Voted  “Best Percussionist” by both the Downbeat Critics’ Poll and Modern Drummer’s Readers’ Poll over several years, Zakir was honored in 2018 by the Montreal Jazz Festival with their Antonio Carlos Jobim Award. Zakir has received several honorary doctorates and, in 2019, became a Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellow, a rare lifetime distinction afforded to only 40 artists at a time by India’s reigning cultural institution. Zakir is the 2022 Kyoto Prize laureate in Arts and Philosophy, awarded by the Inamori Foundation to “those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind.” Zakir became the first musician from India to receive 3 Grammys at one time at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards on February 4, 2024, for Best Global Music Album, Best Global Music Performance and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album.

As an educator, he conducts many workshops and lectures each year, has been in residence at Princeton University and Stanford University, and, in 2015, was appointed Regents Lecturer at UCBerkeley. His yearly workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area, conducted for the past 30 years, has become a widely anticipated event for performers and serious students of tabla. He is the founder and president of Moment Records, an independent record label presenting rare live concert recordings of Indian classical music and world music. Zakir was resident artistic director at SFJazz from 2013 until 2016, and was honored with SF Jazz’s Lifetime Achievement Award on January 18, 2017, in recognition of his “unparalleled contribution to the world of music

*Photo Credits: Martine Severin

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