The Furman University Percussion Ensemble performs a wide variety of literature while also dedicating itself to the commissioning, performing, and recording of new works from a diverse body of living composers and collaborators. The ensemble’s recent accolades include being named a winner of the 2022 Percussive Arts Society International Percussion Ensemble Competition, a New Music/Research Performance at the 2019 Percussive Arts Society International Convention, and recording works for The John Psathas Percussion Project: Volume 1 released through Navona Records. Gramaphone magazine has hailed the recording as having “superbly rendered performances [that] match any of their competitors. We all need a little bit of percussion in our lives, and this fits the bill splendidly.”
As part of a long-standing collaboration with the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities, the ensemble has also become known for its performances of ecoacoustic music, helping promote Furman’s standing as one of the nation’s academic leaders in sustainability. Recent projects include the commissioning and premiering of the concert-length outdoor work Inuksuit by Pulitzer-Prize winning composer John Luther Adams, and a 2019 premiere recording of the music of Matthew Burtner including Avian Telemetry, an interdisciplinary work written expressly for the ensemble. This recording, released through Ravello Records, has been hailed as “a firm commentary about human’s place in nature… an absorbing and enlightening experience that you can’t help but admire.” As part of Furman's commitment to the undergraduate liberal arts experience, students of the Furman Percussion Ensemble also regularly engage in interdisciplinary research and have performed and/or presented at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the Ecomusics and Ecomusicologies conference, the nief-norf Summer Festival Research Summit, the International Conference on Romanticism, and the ESRI International GIS User Conference.
Watch the Furman University Percussion Ensemble and guest narrator Michele Spietz perform Matthew Burtner's Avian Telemetry