Count to Five Recap

• Angélica Negrón (b. 1981):
• 1 Negrón: Count to Five 06:17
• Allison Loggins-Hull (b. 1982):
• 2 Loggins-Hull: Hammers 05:33
• Ellen Reid (b. 1966):
• 3 Reid: Fear | Release 08:31
• Lesley Flanigan:
• 4 Flanigan: Hedera 20:25
• Mary Kouyoumdjian (b. 1983):
• 5 Kouyoumdjian: Samar's Song 05:11
• Caroline Shaw (b. 1982):
• 6 Shaw: By and By: I. Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown 03:58
• Total Runtime 49:55

Info for Count to Five

Spellbinding and transcendent, Recap’s debut album, Count to Five, showcases new generations of powerful music makers giving new breath to the world of percussion and contemporary classical music.

A professional percussion quartet of BIPOC women, all alumni of Mantra Youth Percussion, Arlene Acevedo, Alexis Carter, Tiahna Sterling, and Aline Vasquez joined MYP while students at Rahway High School. Recap reevaluates the white male-dominated world of percussion — Arlene Acevedo explains: “We want to show the world that anyone can do this. We’re young women of color doing this... and you can too!”

Recap releases their debut album, Count to Five, on Innova Recordings on September 24th 2021 with music by Angélica Negrón, Allison Loggins-Hull, Ellen Reid, Lesley Flanigan, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Caroline Shaw. The first track and album’s namesake, written by Angélica Negrón, uses found objects to create a unique and engrossing soundscape, while Hammers by Allison Loggins-Hull reflects on the sound of New York construction and our built environment. Ellen Reid’s Fear | Release is about reframing the familiar in a new light, and is built around a five-note phrase that is echoed and developed in both melodic and textural ways. The Glacial wash of sound on Hedera by Lesley Flanigan is immersive and mesmerizes with swirling transformational voice and percussion. Children of Conflict: "Samar's Song" composed by Mary Kouyoumdjian takes a haunting and heartbreaking story and brings light and hope to our darkest times. Count to Five resolves with Caroline Shaw’s Will there be any Stars in my Crown whichmelds histories and traditions into a contemplative space.

In 2022, Recap will collaborate with indigenous artists from Alaska to present a new hybrid-work that is part performance/part documentary with support from Found Sound Nation, the Wildshore Festival for New Music, and the United States National Parks Service.

Recap aims to tour their new repertoire across the globe and to inspire other young musicians who might not have considered following a path into contemporary arts.

Recap is a new percussion quartet from a new generation of musicians dedicated to music reflecting the diverse society we live in today. Arlene Acevedo, Alexis Carter, Tiahna Sterling and Aline Vasquez, four musicians from Rahway, NJ, formed Recap through music, friendship and a desire to share their story. As recent alumni of Mantra Youth Percussion, the free-tuition teenage ensemble of Mantra Percussion, Inc., the members of Recap worked closely with different music creators, performing both in their community as well as nationally, learning skills that would provide the groundwork for establishing their own group.

Now as a newly-formed professional ensemble, Recap headlines the 2021 New Music Gathering in Saint Paul, MN in August. Recap releases their debut album “Count to Five” with premiere recordings of music by Angelica Negron, Allison Loggins-Hull, Ellen Reid, Lesley Flanigan, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Caroline Shaw. Recap will showcase select pieces from the album at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis, In November, continuing with winter and spring 2022 dates across the country.

"As a musician, it’s often easy to pinpoint the overall themes of an album through instrumentation, genre, and the era with which the music is affiliated. Rarely does a project transcend all of these things, but the debut album from percussion quartet Recap (Arlene Acevedo, Alexis Carter, Tiahna Sterling, and Aline Vasquez) defies the sonic categories that are typically assigned to music." (Donna Lee Davidson)

Recap
Mantra Percussion, Inc.
Lesley Flanigan, voice (track 4)
Andie Tanning, violin (track 5)
Tiahna Sterling, flute (track 2)
Caroline Shaw, voice (track 6)

Recap
is a new percussion quartet from a new generation of musicians dedicated to music reflecting the diverse society we live in today. Arlene Acevedo, Alexis Carter, Tiahna Sterling and Aline Vasquez, four musicians from Rahway, NJ, forms Recap through music, friendship and a desire to share their story. As recent alumni of Mantra Youth Percussion, the free-tuition teenage ensemble of Mantra Percussion, Inc., the members of Recap worked closely with different music creators, performing both in their community as well as nationally, learning skills that would provide the groundwork for establishing their own group.

Now as a newly-formed professional ensemble, Recap headlines the 2021 New Music Gathering in Minneapolis, MN in August. Recap releases their debut album “Count to Five” with premiere recordings of music by Angelica Negron, Allison Loggins-Hull, Ellen Reid, Lesley Flanigan, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Caroline Shaw. Recap will showcase select pieces from the album at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention in Indianapolis, IN in November, continuing with winter and spring 2022 dates across the country

Mantra Percussion, Inc.
is a NYC-based, 501(c)(3) non-profit percussion collective committed to honoring the past and expanding the future of percussion music.

As an organization we strive to engage international audiences by challenging what it means to communicate music through percussion instruments, and to foster high-level musicianship for underserved and underrepresented youth in new music, developing unique and equitable music communities.

Our aim is to bring to life new works for percussion by living composers and creators from across the social spectrum — establishing long-lasting relationships with our collaborators. From our inception we have almost exclusively performed works written for the group. We travel around our block and the world as ambassadors of our repertoire, giving dozens of performances of the works we commission.

Andie Tanning
is a violinist and performer.

She is the cofounder and musical director of Wild Shore New Music, now in its seventh year as Alaska’s premier new music festival. She released her debut album, “Dandelion,” in December 2018. Steve Dollar of the National Sawdust Log writes, “The stylistically diverse Dandelion is not only a scrapbook of Tanning’s experiences and influences, but also an open and always surprising collaboration with composers and video artists whose spirits are illuminated through the violinist’s intrepid musicianship and exploratory nature.”

She has toured internationally as a company member of the New York City Players, has served as a multi-instrumentalist in theater groups Object Collection and New Paradise Laboratories, was the fiddle player in the musical, The Snow Child, by John Strand, Georgia Stitt and Bob Banghart, and was a violin sub in the Broadway revival of Oklahoma!. Ongoing musical collaborations include a duo with guitarist James Moore, the minimalist rock band Thee Reps, and the development of a new opera by Aaron Siegel. Her album with James Moore, “Gertrudes,” was released on New World Records in 2016. She has performed at LA Opera, The Kitchen, The Pompidou, and Carnegie Hall.

Tanning is faculty at Larchmont Music Academy and St. Lukes School.

Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times, New Sounds Live, and The Wall Street Journal.

This album contains no booklet.