Third Coast Percussion at DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, University of Notre Dame

Underwater microphones amplify submerged percussion instruments and the audience participated via cell phones. This is one of the times you can ignore the announcement to turn off and stow your light-emitting device.

Third Coast Percussion—Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin and David Skidmore—don't draw upon the centuries old chamber repertoire as string or wind-instrument ensembles do. Composition for percussion is too new. Instead, they draw a growing audience with pieces by contemporary, and usually living, composers they frequently commission like Augusta Read Thomas, Timothy Andres, Glenn Kotche and this season Nathan Davis and Donnacha Dennehy.

Contemporary chamber music can be melodic and harmonic or dissonant and atonal or all of those in one piece. Regardless, Third Coast, fresh off this summer's Indiana premiere of John Luther Adams's Inuksuit performed in Mishawaka's Central Park, is ascendant. Each year the hardworking quartet uses their 6 weeks of residency at the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Performing Arts Center to create, perform and experiment with fresh ideas and new instruments they often discover on tour.

a Sound uttered, a Silence crossed co-commissioned by the University of Notre Dame's DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the La Jolla Symphony Chorus directed by David Chase, and red fish blue fish.