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    Five Questions

    How do you "play" a cactus? So Percussion thinks of new ways to make sound

    Nancy Wozny
    Feb 11, 2010 | 11:38 am
    • So Percussion, an American percussion quartet based in New York City, withmembers Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, Josh Quillen and Eric Beach
      Photo by Janette Beckman
    • So Percussion in concert

    New York-based chamber ensemble So Percussion made their name playing virtuoso performances of works by Steve Reich, John Cage, David Lang and Paul Lansky. The percussionist ensemble of Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting formed while students at Yale School of Music in 1999, and are widely known for their original productions and their unorthodox methods of making sound.

    Raves in The New York Times and The Boston Globe put the eclectic quartet on the map. This weekend at DiverseWorks, So Percussion brings their newest opus, Imaginary City, inspired by Italo Calvino's classic novel Invisible Cities. Fusing sounds and images from Cleveland, Denver, Burlington (Vermont), Helena (Montana) and our beloved Houston, Imaginary City creates a new place. Treuting gives a brief tour through Imaginary City.

    Q: In Calvino's novel Invisible Cities, Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan the sensual delights of his many travels with a poetic whimsy. Sadly, Polo never made it to Houston. How does Calvino's book manifest in your work Imaginary City?

    A: We use the novel as a jumping off place. When I read the words on the book jacket about Marco Polo describing just one city, Venice, I had this epiphany. When we travel, we notice the similarities between cities more than their differences. So part of what we are doing is celebrating each place as unique, but also how they blend together into one thing. So we are taking images and sounds and layering into one new place.

    Q. How will we hear Houston in Imaginary City? Is too much to ask to make us sound good?

    A: First off, I was born in Houston and grew up in Los Angeles, which shares a lot with Houston in that it's a car town. We were here last season for Da Camera and did a show at DiverseWorks as well. When we get there, we will be sampling local TV news, radio, and voices of Houstonians. But there's another side to it in the way the music is actually written. It's based on zip codes, population and the spelling of the word "Houston." All of the musical structures come from these numbers and words. What's interesting is that, although it's a very abstract process, something does come across about the city.

    Q. Tell me about your collaborators: your sister, filmmaker Jenise Treuting and Eckert.

    A. Jenise traveled by train to all these cities, and took them in from a visual standpoint. The imagery from Houston includes the beautiful geometry of the roads. Rinde is the director, and this is the first time we have ever worked with a director. We wanted to make it an exciting evening-length performance, and we enlisted his help in sculpting an evening. His work contains some wonderful surprises, which I cannot reveal here.

    Q. Sometimes I worry that autotune will dump down our ability to hear and listen. In the noise to music continuum, where does So Percussion place it's mission on waking up our ears?

    A. We come out of a John Cage tradition in that, like Cage, we place very little difference between noise and music. They are the same thing to us. We embrace noise as much as a beautiful harmony, and know the right time to use them. We look for organized noise and sound to play music. That may include crumpling paper or knocking over a stack of cans. We may be living in a pristine autotune/garageband kind of world, but there are still ways to use those in a new way.

    Q. I understand you played a cactus once. Just so you know, we don't have cactuses in Houston, we are a swamp, so you might want to bring your own. What's the strangest thing you have ever played?

    A. Once? Nancy, we have played a cactus numerous times. We have played flower pots, tea cups and beer cans. We have a strange perspective on strange. What is a strange instrument? Once we used bouquets of roses as drumsticks, they worked a bit like brushes, and the petals fell as we played. It was lovely.

    Listen to So Percussion here and watch them performing Reich's Drumming below:

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    news/entertainment

    Movie Review

    Heartfelt movie The Life of Chuck adapts optimistic Stephen King story

    Alex Bentley
    Jun 13, 2025 | 5:30 pm
    Tom Hiddleston in The Life of Chuck
    Photo courtesy of NEON
    Tom Hiddleston in The Life of Chuck.

    Just like actors, once a filmmaker becomes known for a certain genre, it can be difficult to escape that pigeonholing. Writer/director Mike Flanagan has worked for 20 years in both film and television, and literally every project he’s done has been related to horror. He’s finally breaking out with The Life of Chuck, which is ironically based on a short story of the same name by Stephen King.



    Told in three chapters in reverse order, the film is almost impossible to describe without giving away its magic. The first section centers on Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a teacher grappling, like everyone around him, with what seems to be the world falling apart. He’s comforted to a degree by reuniting with his ex-wife, Felicia (Karen Gillan), but is also baffled by multiple ads touting the retirement of Charles “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) after “39 great years.”

    The second section consists of little more than a slightly younger Chuck happening upon Taylor (The Pocket Queen), a drummer busking on a street corner, giving Chuck and a younger woman, Janice (Annalise Basso), the inspiration to start dancing. The final section goes back to the childhood of Chuck (Benjamin Pajak), where he’s raised by his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara), discovers dance as an outlet, and wonders about various small mysteries.

    Flanagan finds a way to deliver a lot of story with relatively little effort. Using a wry narrator (Nick Offerman), a limited number of locations, and a series of great small performances, he creates an intriguing premise with few straightforward answers. The structure of the film is designed to confuse the viewer until just the right moment, and the revelation forces you to reexamine everything that came before.

    The biggest accomplishment by Flanagan is making what are essentially three short films and having each of them resonate equally. The film contains elements of science fiction, although the first section may hit a bit too close to home for some of those watching. All three sections, though, have a heartwarming bent to them that sells their central idea without becoming overly saccharine.

    To do so, each of the characters have to connect in a short amount of time. The casting of the film is crucial, and not only does that department succeed with the main roles, but a series of small roles are filled expertly as well. Carl Lumbly as a funeral home owner, David Dastmalchian and Harvey Guillen as parents of students, Matthew Lillard as Marty’s neighbor, Q’orianka Kilcher as Chuck’s wife, and Jacob Tremblay as a teenage Chuck are just a few of the recognizable actors that do yeoman’s work in their brief time on screen.

    Hiddleston is only prominently featured in the second chapter, but his performance there and in small glimpses throughout makes a big impression. Ejiofor is given the star turn in the first chapter and he absolutely kills, both in moments by himself and in scenes with Gillan, with whom he has great chemistry. Hamill, making a rare non-voiceover appearance outside of the Star Wars universe, and Sara, in her first notable role in 11 years, are also very memorable in the final chapter.

    The Life of Chuck is a film that’s filled with emotion, but the full impact of the story is not felt until the final moments. It has a mysterious journey that is initially frustrating, but the performances keep the film going until it gets to its satisfying payoff.

    ---

    The Life of Chuck is now playing in theaters.

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