Okho by Iannis Xenakis, performed by the Peabody Percussion Trio

Okho 1989 Composed to celebrate the French bicentennial, Okho is scored for three performers on djembe and bass drum and was premiered at the Paris Autumn Festival on October 20, 1989. Xenakis first encountered the West African djembe in the studio of trio le cercle, to whom the work is dedicated. Okho finds a rare balance between the visceral and cerebral, creating a kind of tribal modernism. The work is in eight sections featuring extremely limited rhythmic material recombined in solos, duos and trios. __________________________________________________________ Note from the performers: We were not the ones to come up with the arrangement - it has been done before mostly because classical trained percussionists do not have the hand drum technique and the ability to get all the different sounds of the djembe that Xenakis asks for. Also, the music resembles the material he uses in his percussion set-up piece Rebonds composed the same year. Through the use of different mallets (and even chop sticks!) we hope to bring a fresh and vigorous performance of this wonderful trio. Recorded June 8, 2011 Members of the Peabody Percussion Group include: Tomasz Kowalczyk Kei Maeda Georgi Videnov The Peabody Percussion Trio was founded in September 2008, by three freshmen -- Georgi Videnov, Tomasz Kowalczyk and Kei Maeda - percussion majors studying with Robert van Sice at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Since then, they have performed regularly at the Peabody Percussion Group Concerts and the Peabody Thursday Noon Recital Series among their several recitals in the Maryland area. They have been coached by Sō Percussion, Svet Stoyanov and David Skidmore. Their trio represented Peabody as a part of the Conservatory Project at the Terrace Theater of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, in February 2009, where they performed Rain Tree by Toru Takemitsu. The trio was featured in a recording that won the competition for a showcase concert at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis performing Paul Lansky's percussion quartet Threads in November 2010. During their Junior year, they were selected as one of the Honors Ensembles at Peabody and premiered a new commissioned work by a student composer James Young