originally published: 02/24/2025

(PRINCETON, NJ) -- Members of the award-winning ensemble Sō Percussion will give a talk on "Found Sounds" Tuesday, March 4, 2025, a presentation of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) Soundtracks Series at the Princeton Public Library. They will discuss the unique soundscapes which can be created using everyday items. The event begins at 7:00pm.

Sō Percussion regularly incorporates unusual sounds and found instruments in performances, including in works on their 2025 GRAMMY@ Award-winning album Rectangles and Circumstance with Caroline Shaw.

There will be an opportunity for questions and hands-on engagement with found items so that audience members can produce their own percussive sounds. The free talk takes place in the library’s Community Room.

Sō Percussion are celebrated for a dazzling range of work: for live performances which 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. Committed to the creation and amplification of new work, Sō’s collaborative composition partners include David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nathalie Joachim, Dan Trueman, Kendall K. Williams, among others.

Attendees of the talk will have the opportunity to enter a drawing for free tickets to see Sō Percussion in action as they perform Viet Cuong's inventive Re(new)al with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra at performances March 8-9. Tickets and information for those concerts are available at princetonsymphony.org.

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This season, Sō and Caroline Shaw (as well as Ringdown, Shaw’s duo) perform a program highlighting their 2025 Grammy® Award-winning album, Rectangles and Circumstance, at East Coast venues and in Europe. Sō Percussion are Princeton University’s Edward T. Cone performers-in-residence.

Soundtracks is free and open to the public, and is presented as a PSO BRAVO! community outreach program in partnership with Princeton Public Library. The series is sponsored in the 2024-25 season by AffinIT.

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) is a cultural centerpiece of the Princeton community and one of New Jersey’s finest music organizations, a position established through performances of beloved masterworks, innovative music by living composers, and an extensive network of educational programs offered to area students free of charge. Led by Edward T. Cone Music Director Rossen Milanov, the PSO presents orchestral, pops, and chamber music programs of the highest artistic quality, supported by lectures and related events that supplement the concert experience. Through PSO BRAVO!, the orchestra produces wide-reaching and impactful education programs in partnership with local schools and arts organizations that culminate in students attending a live orchestral performance.

The PSO receives considerable support from the Princeton community and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, regularly garnering NJSCA’s highest honor. Recognition of engaging residencies and concerts has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the PSO’s commitment to new music has been acknowledged with an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming and a Copland Fund Award. The only independent, professional orchestra to make its home in Princeton, the PSO performs at historic Richardson Auditorium on the campus of Princeton University.