Wilco’s Glenn Kotche Talks New Drumkit Quartets Series

For years he has been known as the awe inspiring drummer of Wilco, but in his latest series of compositions, the Drumkit Quartets, Glenn Kotche teams with Sō Percussion. To celebrate the announcement, Kotch and Sō Percussion have announced that they will be performing some of the new songs along with other original works at Carnegie Hall next month in addition to making "Drumkit Quartet #54" available for streaming online.

Although he is most popularly known as Wilco's drummer, Glenn Kotche explained that before being commissioned to write the Drumkit Quartets by Sō Percussion, he had not focused on composing percussion oriented material for some time (via Glide Magazine):

"I originally conceived of writing a suite of drumkit quartets after finishing a string of commissions and projects for mixed instrumentation.

"At the time, I was feeling a strong desire to get back to writing for percussion. I wanted to write without any concern for tonality and really just explore new possibilities for my primary instrument -- the drumkit -- in an ensemble setting."

While the idea of 9-tracks of nothing but drumming might sound a bit tedious to the uninitiated, Kotche told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he was well aware of the clichés going into the project:

"When I do my own music, solo performances, I try to make a distinction between drum solos and solo drums.

"Stereotypically, the drum solo is a display of technique, facility on the drums, right? It's such a limitless musical instrument and when I do shows with the Drumkit Quartets, I'm trying to show that, no, you can make real music, real pieces of substance on this instrument, it's not just about this cliché.

"A lot of these pieces deal with concepts of rhythmic dissonance and consonance and density. It gave me a chance to explore a lot of things."

To get your tickets to Glenn Kotche and Sō Percussion's February 12, performance at Carnegie Hall, be sure to check out to their official website.

And in the meantime, feel free to stream to their latest track, "Drumkit Quartet #57", on Soundcloud.