Recital for 2 vibraphones, 2 marimbas
MINIMAL is the Percussions de Strasbourg’s next recital creation.
Recorded on our own label in April 2025, the album will be released in September 2025.
The program will be available on tour from May 2025.
Program (to choose from among these pieces):
Camille Pépin (1990, France) – Avant, pendant, et pourtant, 15′
Yang Song (1985, China) – Ombres, 15′
Nik Bärtsch (1971, Switzerland) – Seven Eleven, 11′
Shelley Washington (1991, USA) – Sunday, 9′
Steve Reich (1936, USA) – Mallet Quartet, 15′
* Percussions de Strasbourg commission
Performers: Lou Renaud-Bailly, Minh-Tâm Nguyen, Thibaut Weber, Hsin Hsuan Wu
Lighting and Stage Manager: Claude Mathia
Artistic Director: Minh-Tâm Nguyen
Duration : 65′
Commission and production : Les Percussions de Strasbourg
MINIMAL received support from the CNM for the “aide à la production phonographique”.
“While the music known as minimalism and the Percussions de Strasbourg ensemble are decidedly contemporary – born in the cauldron of the early 60s – their paths haven’t crossed until now. Yet they have much in common as they both draw upon the non-Western cultures, music and instruments that brought new vistas to the repertoire of American and European avant-garde. Since their formation in 1962, the Percussions de Strasbourg ensemble has built up an exceptional repertoire of nearly 400 commissioned works and boasts a unique collection of instruments worldwide. The sound of the ensemble stems from the successive generations of musicians that have brought in their sensibilities and, more importantly perhaps, from what those instruments germinated in the minds of composers around the world: work on textures and timbral blend in pieces not primarily focused on rhythm. Today this outstanding and singular repertoire still breathes under the mallets and drumsticks of the ensemble, expanding from year to year with the shifting nuances of our time. It now lives next to other aesthetics.
An ensemble must be loyal to its history, especially when it is as rich and prestigious as the history of Percussions de Strasbourg is, as well as to the sensibilities, cultures, tastes and skills of the musicians in it, not to mention the multiple directions pursued by the composers from whom it commissions works. It is in the possibilities offered by this slight tension that the quiet revolutions and the most beautiful projects come about. MINIMAL is one such project, bridging the gap between worlds previously separated. This album fits into a broader perspective, an openness driving the relationship to new technology and the development of stage practices and expressions which have spawned dance and multidisciplinary forms in the ensemble’s repertoire. The ensemble’s fourth generation of instrumentalists fully engages with their varied tastes. Jazz and so-called classical/contemporary music profoundly permeate the way they address the works. “That’s what defines our style, our aesthetic,” says artistic directorMinh-Tâm Nguyen. “I don’t pretend to be innovating, I just want to enjoy the moment with the musicians that are here.” In this regard, MINIMAL grew out of a very subtle crosspollination of an intuited direction to take and a sustained dialogue between the sensibilities of the artists and the works.
As it turns out, the project originated from a conversation with Camille Pépin. For over a dozen years, the composer (born in 1990) has established herself internationally with a mainly orchestral repertoire equally informed by 19th century French impressionism and American minimal music. While the wealth of her symphony work hardly suggests her taste for repetitive music to the casual listener, Avant, pendant, et pourtant reveals it brilliantly. This is what this commission – around which MINIMAL was formed – is all about. Thinking about the admiration of the composer for Steve Reich’s work, Minh-Tâm Nguyen commissioned a piece for two marimbas and two vibraphones, echoing the original instrumentation of Reich’s Mallet Quartet. This is the other driving force of the project: to embrace a recent yet instantly classic work of minimalism’s repertoire and approach it as a yardstick for gauging the essence of the genre and what the ensemble’s sensitivity can bring to it.
Although Mallet Quartet is a late work of Reich’s from 2009, it follows up on his percussion work of which Drumming (1971) is a milestone. Co-commissioned by the Hungarian Amadinda Percussion and the American Sō Percussion ensembles, it has been documented on seminal recordings that inspire most of those who have performed it for 15 years. While showing respect for the procedures integral to the lineage of minimalism and the composer’s intent, the musicians of Percussions de Strasbourg offer their rendition, imbued with their own history and sensibility. “With Steve Reich, there’s the theory, the mathematics and the architecture, but eventually what’s most important to the performers is the energy that drives them into a heightened state of concentration,” Minh-Tâm Nguyen explains. And what the ensemble seeks out in this score is probably an untapped flexibility and groove, a way of playing that mixes nuance and drive. The piece provides the instrumental foundation for the MINIMAL project, keyboards both percussive and melodic that enable the performers to explore a wide range of sounds where each resonance, each repeated note creates an immersive and ever-shifting soundscape. All the pieces on this album were commissioned or chosen with this crucial element in mind, which acts as a gateway to the wide variety of today’s minimalism output.
With Avant, pendant, et pourtant, Camille Pépin carves a very singular path through the rigor of minimalism – where simplicity and a certain complexity paradoxically coexist – and an almost cinematic composing style. Divided in three movements, two fast sections framing a slow episode, the piece first taps into an energy and rhythm symbolizing love and then wavers into unknown territory, suddenly fragile and uncertain. A regular pulse returns and takes the piece to a final stage where fast and continuous flow leads to light. The composer expounds her intent: “By naming the last movement “Et pourtant” (and yet), I wanted to express the possibility of creating happy moments despite the tragic event of the last section, which is the moment when we hear about a loved one’s illness. Whatever the hardships life throws at us sometimes, soothing moments happen, filled with hope and light, and out of time. Those invaluable moments matter, and they inspire us and keep us going.”
Similarly, it is the memory of a wound that guided Shelley Washington through the writing process of Sunday in the spring of 2021. Or more accurately, the time before the wound occurred: “Last im/perfect afternoon that I had before everything fell apart. (…) Just reading books at the coffee shop, aimlessly wandering around the neighborhood, a slow seat in dappled sunlight. That last easy and kind, bittersweet, normal, quiet, and boring day spent near the park with nothing to do.” Born in Missouri in 1991 and now based in Brooklyn, Shelley Washington is an American saxophonist and composer whose wide-ranging palette pulls from jazz, rock and folk music. No wonder for an artist whose mentors include composers Julia Wolfe and Caroline Shaw and who has collaborated with the contemporary music ensemble Eighth Blackbird as well as the pop musician Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. Although Sunday is not a commission from Percussions de Strasbourg, the performance recorded here is almost a new work of its own right. Shelley Washington composed it for the 2022 edition of the summer residency hosted by the Sō Percussion ensemble at Princeton University, New Jersey. After stumbling upon a video recording of this performance, Minh-Tâm Nguyen reached out to the composer, who then began the painstaking process of editing a piece originally hand-written for the students at Princeton. The performers of Percussions de Strasbourg tackle it today, enjoying the luxury of extended time to work on the nuances and the melancholy, luminous melody.
Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch, born in 1971 in Zurich, shares with the New-York based composer a taste for open-ended music at the edges of jazz at its most Zen-like and modern composition, incorporating pop and groove as well. With his bands Mobile and Ronin or under his own name, his various albums – all released by the legendary ECM label – display a consistent interest in repetitions, combinations and overlapping phrases and patterns. The composer has also written for other ensembles, particularly percussion pieces, including the haunting Seven Eleven (2020), based on interlocking rhythmic cycles, or Shaker Kami, commissioned by Percussions de Strasbourg in 2010 and performed on stage with the composer at the piano. The great precision of his pieces requires arduous practice and a special chemistry between the performers.
This is probably what makes this minimal music project led by Percussions de Strasbourg so original. It fully harnesses the curiosity and openness of the ensemble while offering them a change of perspective. MINIMAL documents a collective at work as a rock or jazz band would be, united by the specific parameters of the music where everyone must learn how to be free, suggest and discuss ideas. They are united by the experience of the recording studio as well. Albums by Percussions de Strasbourg, which have received many awards and distinctions, have often been designed as snapshots of projects already in progress. MINIMAL turns that process on its head: it is first a disk, patient studio work that will lead to multiple live performances worldwide. In this regard, the presence of the accordionist Vincent Peirani as the album’s artistic director hints at the ensemble’s approach. The musician has deeply rejuvenated the language and the accordion repertoire in the jazz world, utilizing a solid classical background as well as an ear attuned to all music genres, regardless of the “modern/contemporary” labels commonly thrust upon them. In that way, his process is exactly along the same lines as the project presented here by Minh-Tâm Nguyen: “What connects these works from all over the world is us, male and female musicians, and the impact that music has had on us. With this project, I wanted to bring a different energy that engages the audience. That’s my way of being contemporary today.”
This four-piece program as recorded here is complemented on stage by a work commissioned from Chinese composer Yang Song, born in 1987 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. She is on the Analysis of Musical Practices team at Cologne University, Germany, and has attended the composition course at IRCAM in Paris. The piece composed by Yang Song for Percussions de Strasbourg presents a new perspective on the folk songs of her native land, featuring intricate rhythms and layered harmonies. She brings another perspective on modern-day minimalism in line with the way composers and ensembles around the world – newcomers or decade-long practitioners – are taking on it.”
Vincent Théval
Production schedule:
April 2025: Recording at Théâtre de Hautepierre, Strasbourg (FR)
March 31 – April 4, 2025: school concerts in the Hautepierre district, Strasbourg (FR)
June 30, 2025: Parc de la Bergerie (Cronenbourg), Strasbourg (FR)
September 19: Album release (Outhere, Believe)
October 2025: Tour of China (CN) & South Korea (KOR)
November 5, 2025: Mc Gill University / Tanna Schulich Hall, Montreal (CA)
December 4, 2025: Album release concert, Théâtre de Hautepierre, Strasbourg (FR)
November-December 2025: Tour of the Alsace region, in partnership with the Communauté Européenne d’Alsace (FR)