Third Coast And Jlin

Third Coast Percussion put out the first single from Vernacular this month, their collaboration with Jlin. It’s called “Premonition,” the album lands October 23rd on Rockwell Records, and it’s their twenty-fifth.

What interests me about this pairing is that it could have gone the easy way. A quartet commissions a producer, the producer writes something percussive, everybody says the word “genre-defying” in the press release. That version happens constantly and it is almost always the acoustic ensemble politely absorbing somebody else’s language.

This one is built for five performers — Jlin is in it, live, with the electronics as an instrument rather than a backing track. Which means the seam between acoustic and electronic has to be negotiated in real time, in front of people, every night. That’s a much harder problem and a much better one.

They’re taking it to Zankel, the Barbican, and the Philharmonie de Paris. I’ll be listening on October 23rd.