Performing Arts Houston presents Sō Percussion with Shodekeh Talifero
(January 16, 2025) – Performing Arts Houston presents GRAMMY-winning ensemble Sō Percussion and breath artist Shodekeh Talifero’s latest collaboration. The evening consists of works by Sō Percussion member Jason Treuting, Shodekeh Talifero, and more, including an opportunity for audience members to learn the basics of breath art in a brief lesson led by Talifero. Tickets from $19 for Sō Percussion and Shodekeh Talifero’s February 12, 2025, performance at the Wortham Center’s Cullen Theater are available at performingartshouston.org.
Performing Arts Houston’s Education & Community Engagement team will host residency events led by members of Sō Percussion and Shodekeh Talifero for the music students at the University of Houston, The Black Man Project, and Urban Souls Dance Company. All audience members are invited to participate in a Westwood Trust Creative Chat following the ensemble’s February 12 performance.
ABOUT SŌ PERCUSSION
For 20 years and counting, Sō Percussion has redefined chamber music for the 21st century through an “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam” (New Yorker). They are celebrated by audiences and presenters for a dazzling range of work: for live performances in which “telepathic powers of communication” (New York Times) bring to life the vibrant percussion repertoire; for an extravagant array of collaborations in classical music, pop, indie rock, contemporary dance, and theater; and for their work in education and community, creating opportunities and platforms for music and artists that explore the immense possibility of art in our time.
Recent highlights have included performances at the Elbphilharmonie, Big Ears 2022 – where they performed Amid the Noise, premiered a new work by Angélica Negrón with the Kronos Quartet, and performed their Nonesuch album with Caroline Shaw, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part – and a return to Carnegie Hall where they performed new collaborations with Nathalie Joachim, and Dominic Shodekeh Talifero. Their Nonesuch recording, Narrow Sea, with Caroline Shaw, Dawn Upshaw, and Gilbert Kalish, won the 2022 Grammy for Best Composition. Other albums include A Record Of… on Brassland Music with Buke and Gase, and an acclaimed version of Julius Eastman’s Stay On It on new imprint So Percussion Editions. This adds to a catalogue of more than 25 albums featuring landmark recordings of works by David Lang, Steve Reich, Steve Mackey, and many more.
In the Summer of 2022, Sō performed at the Music Academy of the West Festival, Newport Classical, at Time Spans in New York, and offers four concerts at Our Festival in Helsinki – including a performance of Let the Soil with Caroline Shaw. Other 2022-23 dates included concerts for Cal Performances, at the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona, at the Barbican in London, the Kennedy Center, and at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
In Fall 2023, Sō Percussion began its tenth year as the Edward T. Cone performers-in-residence at Princeton University. Rooted in the belief that music is an elemental form of human communication, and galvanized by forces for social change in recent years, Sō enthusiastically pursues a range of social and community outreach through their nonprofit organization, including partnerships with local ensembles including Pan in Motion and Castle of Our Skins; their Brooklyn Bound concert series; a studio residency program in Brooklyn; and the Sö Percussion Summer Institute, an intensive two-week chamber music seminar for percussionists and composers.
ABOUT SHODEKEH TALIFERO
With 36 years of personal, professional, and community-based experience, Dominic “Shodekeh” Talifero continues to make musical strides as a groundbreaking and highly adept Beatboxer, Vocal Percussionist and Breath Artist who pushes the boundaries of the human voice within and outside the context of Hip Hop music and culture. As the first vocal percussionist to do so, he formally served as a dance technique musician and composer-in-residence for Towson University’s Department of Dance for 12 years and is the founding director of Embody, A Festival Series of the Vocal Arts, which strives for artistic and cultural convergence through a variety of vocal art traditions from a multitude of worlds such as opera and Tuvan throat singing, to the many forms of vocal percussion, which has featured such vocal luminaries as Madison McFerrin, Alash Ensemble, Dan Deacon, Raul Midon, and Joyce J. Scott.
Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion born within the world of Hip Hop, and easily exists as one the most highly advanced vocal art forms known within the diversity of the human voice. Imitating and often replacing a drum set, drum machine, or drum loop through a series of vocal effects or percussive sounds primarily produced by the larynx, nasal, oral and chest cavities, Beatboxing exemplifies the Hip Hop philosophy of creating meaningful artistic expressions with limited resources at its most extreme; it replaces the source of the timeless break beat with the human voice, becoming a ubiquitous and indigenous feature of the African American city experience and soundscape.
In previous years Talifero served as music faculty of the American Dance Festival at Duke University and has served as the chosen musician for a variety of master class experiences led by such luminaries as Ailey II of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Ensemble, and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. In his close relationship with the world of dance, he has acquired a wealth of experiences of applying his vocal and rhythmic skills in the movement context of ballet, capoeira, fire movement, belly dancing and a wide range of modern dance techniques created by such legends as Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, and Lester Horton.
This deeply synthesized relationship with dance, which began in 2006 has also played a tremendous role in Shodekeh’s sustained & pioneering development of ‘Breath Art”, which is essentially the deep practice and extensive research of isolated creative breathing techniques and methods maintained within the musical and kinesthetic modalities of universal human vocal expression. This deep artistic and philosophical practice and ongoing research of “Breath Art” are greatly exemplified in the recent commissions of original compositional work for the Covid-19 sculptures created by Rebecca Kamen for the 2021 exhibition “Reveal” at the American University Museum in Washington DC and his cymatic / sound art composition “Vymatics” for the 2022 world premiere event of “Voyages”, a brand new immersive science communication series based at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD.
Over the years, Talifero has evolved and moved through the world as a musical ambassador from Beatboxing’s Hip Hop roots to explore innovative and convergent cultural collaborations with a wide range of traditional and classical artists. He serves as the Beatboxer and vocal percussionist for the globally renown Alash Ensemble, one of the world’s leading Tuvan Throat Singing ensembles from Southern Siberia, and features as a guest artist on their Smithsonian Folkways album release “Achai”, as well as a co-curator and executive producer on the recently released album “Embodiments” with Bady Dorzhu Ondar of Alash, which is the first full album of Traditional Tuvan Throat Singing and Hip Hop fusion; has become a regular collaborator with the magnificent percussion and rhythm ensemble So Percussion based at Princeton University, with whom he composed for during Shodekeh’s historic Carnegie Hall debut in 2021.
One of Shodekeh’s most recent and by far bravest endeavor has been the recent establishment of his own collection and living archive with the Towson University Special Collections and University Archives in 2021, which is entitled “Ideations of Potential: Shodekeh’s Innovation Lab of Embodied Scholarship & Hip Hop Imagination”. This lifelong collaboration is the first Hip Hop-based archive created in the state of Maryland and the first Beatbox / Breath Art driven archive instituted in the world, with the expressed and dedicated mission of maximizing the collection as a platform for raising awareness on the epidemic of black youth suicide and ideation.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets start at $19, at performingartshouston.org or by calling the Performing Arts Houston Box Office at (713) 227-4772. To support the arts and enjoy benefits like early access to new performances, exclusive pricing, and more, become a Performing Arts Houston member at performingartshouston.org/memberships.
ABOUT PERFORMING ARTS HOUSTON
Performing Arts Houston is a leading non-profit performing arts presenter dedicated to connecting audiences with exceptional artists from around the globe. Founded in 1966, the organization remains committed to advancing artistic innovation, community engagement, and cultural enrichment. With a legacy spanning over five decades, Performing Arts Houston has presented many of the most influential artists of our time.
Each year, Performing Arts Houston presents a multi-disciplinary season of over 60 performances across Houston’s historic Theater District and venues citywide and creates a wide range of programs and opportunities for students and lifelong learners to engage with and experience the arts, including masterclasses, workshops, talks, student matinees, performance avenues for local arts groups, paid arts administration internships, a commissioning series for working Houston artists, and in-school residencies. Learn more at performingartshouston.org.
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CALENDAR DETAILS
Performing Arts Houston
presents
So Percussion with Shodekeh Talifero
Cullen Theater, Wortham Center
Tickets from $19
performingartshouston.org
For media inquiries, please contact:
Caroline Senter, Public Relations Manager
Email: csenter@performingartshouston.org
Phone: 713-632-8105