The reviews are in for Colin Currie Group’s debut recording, Drumming, released on 9 March, including a fantastic five stars from the Times and Editor’s Choice in Gramophone:

***** Performance ***** Recording “Colin Currie Group’s version is highly immediate and resonant … honed through long performance practice, brings you into a magic circle where every impact is precisely heard, every overtone burnished.”
BBC Music Magazine, May 2018

***** May D’Or “It’s hard to imagine how this inaugural disc could be made any better.”
Diapason

“Very, very special!”
Stretto, May 2018

“The authenticity of this performance is clear: Reich and Currie have known each other for years, the percussionist a prominent advocate of the composer’s work”
Opus Klassiek, May 2018

Editor’s Choice “These guys have a pedigree with this unfathomably difficult score and their fresh, slick recording shows it. Handling of the overlapping of Reich’s 12 beat pattern – polyrhythmic as each of the nine percussionists, two vocalists, piccolo player and whistler shimmy on to their own individual down-beat – is rock solid. On top, the playing is more than secure: confident, bright and delivered on the front foot, in apparent contrast to the ritualistic sobriety with which Reich and his musicians would play the piece in its infancy. The performance is tighter than that from Ictus, the current Gramophone recommendation. It is also more rooted, as neat and magnificent as a Rothko in its sewing-up of the bigger picture. A Drumming for this decade – and probably a few to come, too.”
Gramophone, April 2018

“These musicians have long familiarity with Reich and with this work, and it shows: they are comfortable in the music’s framework, in its skin. Highly recommend.”
All Music, April 2018

“Infectiously playful, the Colin Currie Group drift through Reich’s score. The young Brits bring each note to life and their drums sing.”
BR Klassik, April 2018

“The Colin Currie Group’s performance is nothing short of a powerhouse…a visceral thrill: epic, cathartic, and (perhaps especially for pure percussion music) profoundly touching”
Arts Fuse, April 2018

“This recording of Steve Reich’s percussion epic is thunderously exciting, thrusting us into the action.”
Times, five stars, March 2018

“A blistering account of Reich’s masterpiece and a spectacular first release for the Currie label.”
Classical Source, March 2018

“Sheer physicality and visceral intensity”
Guardian, February 2018

Drumming is the first release on the newly launched Colin Currie Records. Purchase the album here or listen on Spotify.