Ensemble

Awake Percussion was founded in Helsinki in 2016. The group’s aim is first and foremost to give audiences the opportunity to hear the most fascinating music of our times, performed with the utmost conviction. Commissioning new music and working in close collaboration with composers is a central part of the ensemble’s artistic vision. Awake Percussion’s unique and artistically coherent concert programmes are all constructed around new works commissioned by the group and Finnish premieres of other works. The quartet of players comprises the four board members of the Percussion Chamber-Music Society, an organisation whose aims include furthering audiences’ awareness of percussion music and providing percussion teaching right across Finland.

The ensemble’s name, Awake Percussion, is a nod to its direct ancestor, the Breath Ensemble which operated under the auspices of the Percussion Chamber-Music Society. The choice of the word ‘awake’ is important as it refers, on the one hand, to the very literal awakening of the Chamber-Music Society’s activities, which had dwindled in recent years. More than that, the word reminds us of where it all began and says something of the group’s mission to remain constantly ‘awake’ in the ever changing and developing worlds of music and art.

 The Musicians

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The Society

The Percussion Chamber Music Society was founded in 1988 as a subsect of the work of the Breath Ensemble. The final concert of the chamber-music ensemble in its former incarnation was in 2007 at founding member Tim Ferchen’s 60th birthday concert. The association then fell silent for almost a decade until the current committee revived the group’s work. The primary aims of the Percussion Chamber Music Society are to produce concerts of the highest calibre and provide percussion teaching right across Finland.

The current committee comprises percussionists Petteri Kippo, Lauri Pekkarinen, Jerry Piipponen and Walter Witick, who have studied at renowned institutions around the world including the Sibelius Academy, the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Universität der Künste in Berlin, and the Manhattan School of Music. Besides chamber music, the committee members hold positions in the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Lappeenranta City Orchestra, and at the Espoo Music Institute. In addition, all four are active as freelancers in the Finnish orchestral and chamber-music scenes.

Repertoire

Akiho, Andy

• Pillar IV (Finnish premiere 16.8.2017)

Cage, John

• Living Room Music

Crumb, George

• An Idyll for the Misbegotten

Dun, Tan

• Snow in June

Ferchen, Timothy

• Broken (premiere 16.8.2017)

• Mallet Quartet (premiere 3.3.2018)

• Masquerades (commissioned by Awake Percussion)

• Music for a Quiet Day (premiere 24.4.2019)

• Music for Four Marimbas (premiere 9.6.2019)

Xenakis, Iannis

Xenakis, Iannis

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