Third Coast Percussion's borderless music finds inspiration in fleet-footed beats

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2022/05/13/ [login to see] /third-coast-percussion-perspectives-review-jlin-danny-elfman-philip-glass
The style of electronic music and dance known as footwork might appear a strange bedfellow to classical music, but the Grammy-winning group Third Coast Percussion embraces the fleet-footed sound on Perspectives, a new album that pushes the notion of a percussion ensemble into fresh territory.

Footwork is the hyper-beat music born in Chicago's underground dance competitions and house parties in the late 1990s. On Third Coast Percussion's album, the style undergoes a mesmerizing transformation in a seven-movement suite called Perspective.

The music, which often clocks at 150 beats per minute or more, is by Jerrilynn Patton, a footwork fan who began slicing up her own electronic beats at her parent's home in Gary, Ind. She was working in a nearby steel mill when Dark Energy, her debut album, won her critical acclaim in 2015 — although she says she's tired of journalists trotting out the story.

Going by Jlin, the electronic artist has absorbed footwork, but turned it inside out for her collaboration with Third Coast Percussion. She did not score the work on manuscript paper, but instead brought her myriad layers of audio stems to the Third Coast musicians and together they fashioned a version that could be performed on over 30 instruments.