Melody Competition performed by So Percussion

SO PERCUSSION: Music of Evan Ziporyn & David Lang
(Cantaloupe Records, 2004)
So Percussion is a venturesome new quartet; this smart debut release offers nothing but the members' names and the audible evidence of their formidable musical skills. These players work their way into rhythmic grooves at once sharply controlled and loose enough to breathe, and the disc boasts the repertoire to put those virtues into play. Evan Ziporyn's "Melody Competition," as its title suggests, is a stylistic free-for-all, in which thematic strains from Balinese gamelan, Chinese pentatonic scales and a thumping American bass drum are thrown into the ring and left to duke it out with invigorating and often surprising results. In "The So-Called Laws of Nature," composer David Lang works over a few well-worn rhythmic and tonal patterns at great length; the repetitiveness of the music is alleviated by the group's shimmery range of tonalities.

Joshua Kosman
San Francisco Chronicle
May 30 2004