Three concerts featuring composer Steve Reich’s “Drumming,” music inspired by massive storms, and a string quartet joined by an Australian didgeridoo player are featured in the 2016-17 season of Fuze, the out-of-the-box series presented by Akron’s Tuesday Musical.
Two of the concerts are at the Akron Art Museum. All begin at 7 p.m. and end with refreshments and opportunities to mingle with the performers.
Season subscriptions for $60 and individual tickets for $25 per concert are available at 330-761-3460 or www.tuesdaymusical.org. Tickets are also available at the door as long as seats are available.
The 2016-17 Fuze season opens Wednesday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m., with So Percussion and The University of Akron Percussion Ensemble performing “Drumming” at Guzzetta Recital Hall, 157 University Ave., on the UA campus. “Drumming” is Reich’s breakthrough masterpiece for percussion and voice, inspired by the legendary composer’s studies in West Africa.
With its innovative multi-genre original productions, sensational interpretations of modern classics such as “Drumming,” and an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam,” (The New Yorker), So Percussion has redefined the scope of the modern percussion ensemble.

(Photo courtesy of Tuesday Musical)
Based in New York City and also performing with the Akron Symphony on Oct. 15 at EJ Thomas Hall, So recently completed a four-concert residency at the Lincoln Center Festival and its fifth Carnegie Hall appearance. In December the quartet returns to Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival with “A Gun Show,” a new evening-length work that is a meditation on guns in America. Three members of So are from Northeast Ohio and one, Joshua Quillen, is a graduate of The University of Akron School of Music.
On Thursday, Nov. 3, 7 p.m., Fuze presents “Weather Scores: Science, Data, Sculpture and Music” at the Akron Art Museum, 1 South High St., Akron. The concert is in tandem with the museum and its “Intersections: Artists Master Line and Space” exhibition featuring works by Nathalie Miebach and other artists who explore the connections between sculptures and works on paper.
Miebach’s complex woven sculptures are based on weather data from massive storms. For the concert, an ensemble of Northeast Ohio musicians will perform three compositions by Mischa Salkind-Pearl and Christian Gentry based on Miebach’s works, including the world premiere of a work by Gentry commissioned by Tuesday Musical. After the concert, Janice Driesbach, the museum’s chief curator, and Jarrod Hartzler, Tuesday Musical’s executive and artistic director, will lead a discussion with the artist and composers about how they work together and the evolution of their unique collaboration.
The season concludes with the Del Sol String Quartet and didgeridoo virtuoso Stephen Kent in concert on Saturday, March 18, 7 p.m., at the Akron Art Museum. Del Sol and Kent will interpret the string quartets of the late Peter Sculthorpe, one of Australia’s most-celebrated composers known primarily for his orchestral and chamber music evoking the sounds and feeling of the Australian bush and outback. Stating that he wanted his music to make people feel better and happier for having listened to it, Sculthorpe also wrote 18 string quartets using unusual tone effects but avoiding the dense, atonal techniques of many of his contemporary composers.
The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation is the presenting sponsor of Fuze this season, with additional support for the Oct. 15 concert from the Louis S. and Mary Myers Foundation.
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