Bells and whistles

Percussionist Justin DeHart

…inspired by the New Zealand percussion scene.

Pow! The first drumbeat of Justin DeHart’s new percussion album LANDFALL has the impact of a gunshot. It’s the dramatic opening of Tautology by Glenda Keam, a dynamic piece for drums, the title a wordplay referring to stretched skins.

This Rattle release is Volume 1 in a series of New Zealand percussion music. DeHart, a member of the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, came to teach at the University of Canterbury in 2017. A brilliant, much-recorded musician, he finds the percussion scene here inspiring, including its Māori and Pacific influences. “To name a few,” he says, “various taonga pūoro, composer Phil Dadson, From Scratch, Strike Percussion and music by Gareth Farr and John Psathas.”

The album takes its name from Rosa Elliot’s Landfall, the composer describing “celestial soundscape to earthly landing”. This spacious music, influenced by the meditative tintinnabula works of Arvo Pärt, provides the album’s still centre, followed by four miniatures. Robert Bryce’s New Music Dance explores the percussionist’s movements while three appealing experimental pieces, Silver Wind, Golden Earth and White Water, from a collaboration between composer Simon Eastwood and choreographer Justyna Janiszewska, offer intriguing sounds and atmospheres.

Mark Menzies’ light-hearted lockdown piece, Scales and Taonga, has borrowed excerpts from Bach, Webern and his own tiny Dragon for Health, creating the “music box” sound of metallic tuned percussion. Curating for maximum contrast, DeHart follows with Chris Gendall’s Plateaux - hands, brushes and gentle sticks create delicate sounds on taut skins. 

The album’s variety reflects DeHart’s eclectic interests. David Downes’ marimba solo Bells/Mirrors follows Keam’s work as magical juxtaposition, its shimmering surface a vehicle for the performer’s virtuosic skills.  Order 81 by Christchurch composer Alex van den Broek is overtly political - static circularity of form with recurring dull knocking sounds against punctuating bass drum and triangle express the composer’s abhorrence of war-profiteering in theatres such as Iraq.

Reuben de Lautour’s substantial Braided Plain Soundwalk uses electronic sound-processing to create a sophisticated sonic texture from the sounds of just two stones, transformations moving from resonant tapping to watery cascades. The work’s remarkable range of timbre and effect makes a fitting conclusion to LANDFALL, which whets the appetite for Volume 2.  

LANDFALL Justin DeHart (percussionist) New Zealand Percussion Vol 1 (available from Rattle)

This review was first published in the NZ Listener issue August 7, 2021