Percussionist and conductor Jeffrey Means joins ANAM Percussion for a program that tests the limits of sound, silence, and performance.

The evening opens with James Tenney’s Having Never Written a Note for Percussion — a single, slowly rising and falling roll that transforms from near-silence to a wall of resonance, revealing the physical space of listening itself. Rick Burkhardt’s Great Hymn of Thanksgiving brings theatre into the mix, as performers speak and play through a darkly comic dinner-table scene. Vinko Globokar’s Kvadrat pushes precision and coordination to extremes, while Pierluigi Billone’s Tre Alberi treats instruments as extensions of the body — raw, tactile, and alive.

“New music demands dialogue — between musicians, between sound and silence, between intention and accident.” – Jeffrey Means, from an interview with I Care If You Listen (2014)