Bang on a plank: Mantra Percussion brings Michael Gordon's Timber to BAM

This past December at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, six percussionists drummed on wooden planks for an hour in one of the most powerful performances of 2012. The six musicians of Mantra Percussion (Joe Bergen, Al Cerulo, Chris Graham, Michael McCurdy, Jude Traxler, and Nick Woodbury) were performing the New York première of Michael Gordon’s Timber, an immersive and meditative work.

Late Brahms, early Schoenberg: under Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic draw tenderness from two monumental scores. 

Songs and symphonies from Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, concluding with a vision of “heavenly life” from Gustav Mahler. 

Fragments by Brahms, Schoenberg and Schubert orbit Beethoven's Waldstein and Schumann's Carnaval in another masterful recital from Sir Stephen Hough.  

In Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, Yulianna Avdeeva commands attention through sheer innate charisma, anchored in intense engagement.