Jason Treuting & Sō Percussion
Biography Jason Treuting & Sō Percussion
Jason Treuting
A founding and current member of the influential quartet, Sō Percussion, composer/percussionist Jason Treuting has appeared in performance throughout the world, from the Barbican to Lincoln Center, to Carnegie Hall, DOM Moscow, Walt Disney Hall, and elsewhere. His compositions, widely noted for their compelling rhythmic language and evocative expressivity, have been performed by artists including Shara Nova, the JACK Quartet, TIGUE, Susan Marshall and Company, and others.
Additionally, Treuting explores and composes music in collaboration with artists including laptop artist/composer Cenk Ergun; guitarist Grey Mcmurray; and guitarist/composer Steve Mackey (their New Amsterdam album, Orpheus Unsung, has received widespread critical acclaim), among others.
Treuting’s original compositions include Amid the Noise, an evolving suite of musical explorations scored for a flexible range of instruments; this work has been performed widely by Sō Percussion, Matmos and other artists, at the Lincoln Center Festival, the Barbican, the Walker Arts Center, National Sawdust, and elsewhere. It has been presented by Fast Forward Austin, Kadence Arts Boston, Chatterbird, and others, and was recorded by Sō Percussion for release on Cantaloupe Records.
Treuting’s other works for Sō include contributions to Imaginary City, Where (we) Live and A Gun Show, works which appeared on the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. Recent commissions for other ensembles have included Oblique Music for 4 plus (blank), a concerto for Sō Percussion and string orchestra for the League of Composers Orchestra; and most recently, Nine Numbers 4, a commission from the Composers Guild of New Jersey and performed in 2018 at Princeton University.
He received his Bachelors in Music and the Performer’s Certificate at the Eastman School of Music where he studied percussion with John Beck and drum set and improvisation with Steve Gadd, Ralph Alessi and Michael Cain. He received his Masters in Music along with an Artist Diploma from Yale University where he studied percussion with Robert Van Sice. Jason Treuting studied marimba with Keiko Abe in Japan, and gamelan with Pac I Nyoman Suadin in Bali.
Jason Treuting is co-director of the Sō Percussion Summer Institute, an annual intensive course on the campus of Princeton University for college-aged percussionists. He is also co-director of a new percussion program at the Bard College Conservatory of Music, and is a lecturer of music at Princeton University, where Sō Percussion is ensemble-in-residence. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife, the violist Beth Meyers, and their two daughters.
Sō Percussion
For over a decade, So Percussion has redefined the modern percussion ensemble as a flexible, omnivorous entity, pushing its voice to the forefront of American musical culture. Praised by the New Yorker for their “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” So’s adventurous spirit is written into the DNA passed down from composers like John Cage and Steve Reich, as well as from pioneering ensembles like the Kronos Quartet and Nexus Percussion. So Percussion’s career now encompasses 13 albums, touring throughout the USA and around the world, a dizzying array of collaborative projects, several ambitious educational programs, and a steady output of their own music.
Over time, an appetite for boundless creativity lead the group to branch out beyond the composer/interpreter paradigm. Since 2006 with group member Jason Treuting’s amid the noise, the members of So Percussion have been composing in their own right within the group and for others. In 2012 their third evening-length work Where (we) Live premieres at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, travelling to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 30th Next Wave Festival and the Myrna Loy Center in Helena, MT. Where (we) Live follows on the heels of 2009’s Imaginary City, a fully staged sonic meditation on urban soundscapes. In 2011, So was commissioned by Shen Wei Dance Arts to compose Undivided Divided, a 30-minute work conceived for Manhattan’s massive Park Avenue Armory.
So Percussion’s artistic circle extends beyond their contemporary classical roots. They first expanded this boundary with the prolific duo Matmos, whom The New York Times called “ideal collaborators” on their 2010 combined album Treasure State. Further projects and appearances with Wham City shaman Dan Deacon, legendary drummer Bobby Previte, jam band kings Medeski, Martin, and Wood, and Wilco’s Glenn Kotche drew the circle even wider. In 2011, the rock band The National invited So to open one of their sold-out shows at New York’s Beacon Theater.
So’s recording of the so-called laws of nature became the cornerstone of their self-titled debut album on Cantaloupe Music (the record label from the founders of Bang on a Can) in 2004. In subsequent years, this relationship blossomed into a growing catalogue of exciting records. In 2011, So released six new albums, ranging from their definitive recording of Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet – composed for them in 2009 - on Nonesuch Records, to Steve Mackey’s epic quartet It Is Time on Cantaloupe, to their collaborative album Bad Mango with jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas on Greenleaf Music. The BBC raved of So’s performance of Mallet Quartet that they “have it nailed, finding both the inner glow and the outer edge, and never letting the tapestry lapse into the flat or routine.
