Michael Gordon, 'Timber & Rushes'

Bang-on-a-Can co-founder Michael Gordon, one of America's most adventurous composers, writes music characterized by 'vigor and hypnotic intensity' (The New York Times). Mantra Percussion and The Rushes Ensemble come to the Durham Fruit & Produce Company - a new downtown warehouse space dedicated to the arts - with a program of two of Gordon's thematically-linked major works that have never before been presented in the United States in a single evening. Timber, for percussionists playing two-by-fours - like you might buy at a lumber yard -- creates a rhythmic atmosphere of overtones that The Boston Globe describes as 'a halo, an ethereal aura of sound.' Rushes also makes inventive use of unusual resources: it is a reflective, sixty-minute tour de force scored for seven bassoons and partially inspired by the ethos of Timber. The pieces will be performed in two adjacent spaces, separated by an intermission. In this immersive, site-specific experience, Gordon intends to create 'a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state in the listener as well as the performer.'