Michael Gordon's Rushes at National Sawdust

The seven members of the Rushes Ensemble bring Rushes, Michael Gordon's inspiring piece for seven bassoons, to National Sawdust in Brooklyn on Thursday, January 26.

Rushes takes its place alongside Gordon’s Timber for expanding the boundaries of a single instrument’s repertoire into unknown (and at times, otherworldly) spaces. Like Timber, which maps new percussive territory for the simantra—a simple two-by-four slab of wood, amplified and played in a group of six to yield trance-like sonic textures—Rushes brings out tonal and timbral aspects of the bassoon that are meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer.