"My sister came up with it," says founding member Jason Treuting. "She told us it's a form of a Japanese word for offering sound or music." The full word is actually sosuru - but we won't quibble.
In this year celebrating Reich's 70th birthday, the members of So - Treuting, Josh Quillen, Lawson White and Adam Sliwinski - have been on the road with Drumming, a work lasting more than 70 minutes. That's a lot of drumming for a quartet (augmented by additional guest players, here drawn from the percussion department at the host Lamont School of Music). Incredibly, the intricate minimalist score is played from memory.
"We realized that people are looking for entertainment when they go to a concert, and we wanted to make this visually compelling," Treuting explained. "It's not fun to watch a bunch of players just reading the music off the page." True, but the presence of the score does provide a nice comfort level.
"Sure, playing from memory is risky," he agreed. "But we rehearse every day for three hours. We learned the first movement by playing it hundreds of times.
" The group formed when the original foursome were grad students at Yale in 1999. Reich came to teach there in 2001 and was quite astonished when So offered Drumming for four players. "It's originally for nine, so he did question our approach," Treuting said.
"We told him we couldn't work three hours each day with nine players. Eventually, we convinced him." The quartet will be in residence at the Lamont School, working with their student colleagues, who will likewise perform on Saturday without printed music.
"They'll just learn it by playing along - but we'll give them cues," Treuting said. Performing Drumming resembles something close to a ritual, he added. "We start with only one player onstage, then another and another.
As a player, you become so involved with your instrument." The piece is in four parts - the first played by tuned drums, the second on marimbas, the third with glockenspiels, whistling and a piccolo, the fourth combining all of the above plus two singers. Treuting insisted there was more in the music than the repetitive flow of minimal ideas - but he did reduce this expansive work to a simple rhythmic idea: "The basis of the whole piece is 'tucka-dun-dun; tucka-dun-dun.
' " Though the instrumentation does switch and the visual treat of watching and listening can be involving, the sheer length of the piece provides a challenge for audiences. How to listen? "Whatever makes you happy," Treuting said.
"I mean, look at me. Growing up, I never went to a Reich concert. I was a rock and jazz drummer, the kind of person who was kind of scared of classical music.
" Hearing this music may be an individual experience, but performing it requires a serious commitment, he said. Just as being a member of So has its demands. "You have to buy into the philosophy and aesthetic of the group," he noted.
One of the unexpected pleasures of being in So has been the opportunity to work with serious students of percussion, Treuting pointed out. "We give lots of master classes, and the ability to talk with students is great. "We're all so close in age, that we're able to talk.
But, for a 29-year-old guy like me, giving a master class is kind of a funny feeling." When and where: 7:30 p.m.
Saturday in Gates Concert Hall, University and Iliff Of note: The percussion quartet performs music by Reich and Lang. Marc Shulgold is the music and dance writer.
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