PERCUSSIA, Murmuration

The clever and thought-provoking titles of Queens NY based modern chamber music ensemble Percussia’s first two albums – Plucked and Struck (2024) and their latest, Murmuration – perfectly reflect and symbolize the intricate and captivating signature sound the five-piece unit creates with their unique fusion of percussion (by group founder Ingrid Gordon and Frank Cassara), harp (Susan Jolles), flute (Margaret Lancaster) and viola and fadolin (Ljova). Bridging classical traditions with modern sensibilities while drawing eclectic pop and global music inspiration from NYC’s cultural diversity, they’ve become community icons by bringing their intimate music to venues such as libraries, churches, parks, historic sites, even local laundromats, in addition to traditional concert halls.  

On Plucked & Struck, Percussia invited fans to experience a Celtic harp and small percussion (including Orff) xylophones like no other, discovering fresh global fusion possibilities via Indonesian gamelan riffs, Sephardic melodies and Gaelic music. The work was likely the first to explore the classical potential of the pairing of harp and Orff xylophone. For Murmuration, they expand from the duo format of their debut to the full ensemble (plus the transcendent  soprano Melissa Fogarty on the Dennis Tobenski composed six piece closing suite “Starfish at Pescadero) to become the musical embodiment of an almost surreal natural phenomenon where thousands of starlings fly in intricate, perfectly synchronized patterns, forming shifting shapes in the sky, often at dusk in autumn or winter.

What our eyes experience as a glorious manifestation of the beauty of nature is the birds simply trying to stay warm and evade predators. It feels like a natural metaphor for a band of stunning virtuosos and soloists who join forces to create their innate chemistry and quite literal flights of musical fancy. Considering the parallels to those migratory birds, it makes perfect sense why Percussia would make composer Alexis Lamb’s three-part suite “Murmuration” the titular centerpiece of the album.

While the pieces only comprise 11 minutes of the album’s 71-minute run time, they’re the true heart and soul of the collection, bringing to literally soaring life the composer’s artful musical interpretation of the fascinating Murmuration process. “Murmuration I” is a hypnotic, polyrhythmic dance blending spirited xylophone energy with increasingly percussive chamber strings. “Murmuration II” begins in a more lyrical, meditative mode before Margaret Lancaster’s flute flutters in, subtly intertwining with Susan Jolles’ gentle harp. “Murmuration III” rolls like fascinating percussive dialogues between xylophone and strings before Lancaster begins wafting above and floating away, leaving a bittersweet, melancholy feeling.   

Preceding and following the title suite, Percussia brings an emotionally impactful, wonderful sense of exuberance, plucky joy, adventure and reflective soulfulness to a presentation of signature pieces - or what we might conventionally call their “greatest hits.” The first suite Moiré, a charming, almost mystical, multi-mood showcase for harp and xylophone, is a long distance collaboration with California composer Bill Clark that is one of Percussia’s first original works. First appearing on composer and multi-instrumentalist Carlos Nicolau’s 2017 album Music for the Moving Imagination, the group’s re-imagined “Espejismos” is an effusive romp mixing xylophone, strings and flute into a colorful mélange.

One of the enduring delights of Murmuration is the eclectic array of styles Percussia ventures into. While Matthew Welch’s four part suite “Variasi Ombak” offers a sparsely arranged, sometimes harmonious, sometimes atonal, almost liquefying immersion into the trippy realms of Scottish Highland bagpipes and Balinese gamelan, Dennis Tobenski’s closing six piece “Starfish at Pescadero” is a rhythmically peripatetic narrative song cycle, premiered in 2007, set to a powerful poem sequence by San Francisco based poet Idris Anderson. Melissa Fogarty’s expressive vocal passion illuminates the series of vignettes of a trip to the beach to explore themes of sorrow amidst happy times and the inability to communicate feelings.

One Percussia’s most exciting attributes is their keen ability to create music and tell stories reflective of their cultural and physical surroundings in NYC, including collaborations with local composers (like Nicolau) and chronicles of their own experiences. Amidst their interpretations of works of outside composers on Murmuration is the newest presented suite, “On the Street Where I Live,” written by the group’s violist Ljova. It’s a darkly haunting, four part meditation on life in New York City during the pandemic, starting with ambulance siren notes created by flute and xylophone (“The Never-Ending Ambulances”) and continuing with the urgent, cautiously hopeful “Help Somebody,” the spirited, shaker percussion driven “Gas Nign (Street Tune)”  and concluding with Ljova’s own sharp, piercing high viola notes on the drama-filled, anxiety ridden closer “Desperate Measures.”