November 12, 2020
by Christian Kriegeskotte
In tandem with the evolving norms of the past year, Los Angeles based piano duo HOCKET (the combined hands of Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff) has taken to the internet in the presentation of a new series entitled #What2020SoundsLike.
With 2020 continuing to unravel in more and more harrowing ways, the integrity of the new music scene has remained stoic if not in flux. Sadly, as a result of the ongoing global pandemic, the delicate economy of live music (and the livelihood of its performers and content creators) has thus far taken a mortal blow. Nonetheless, adaptation rather than retreat has emerged as a rallying cry to keep the show going. While some have attempted to make new accommodations with a nostalgic “the way things used to be” kind of vibe, HOCKET’s #What2020SoundsLike remains acutely embedded in the present moment. Even the project’s name, stylized as a trendy hashtag, addresses the dominance of social media in its multifaceted role as potential savior and destroyer of worlds.
What HOCKET has done is commissioned fifty (50!) composers to create a miniature work that in some way expresses their unique perspective on the endlessly surprising events of the present. The result is a beautifully diverse and expressive panorama that, in summary, portrays something that is likely relatable to any listener about 2020; anxiety, frustration, fear, optimism, protest, resistance, retreat, isolation, and despite it all, finding ways to allow artists to come together and interact, even if we must be physically apart.
September 25, 2020
by Victoria Looseleaf
Webster’s defines the word “hocket” as “a spasmodic or interrupted effect in medieval and contemporary music produced by dividing a melody between two parts — notes in one part coinciding with rests in the other.” For Los Angeles-based Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff, it’s the name of the piano duo they founded in 2014. Hailed by The New Yorker as an “adventurous young ensemble,” the musicians are also composers dedicated to commissioning and performing contemporary music.
Having met in graduate school at USC more than a decade ago, the pair has performed in some of the most exciting festivals and venues across the country, including The Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival at MASS MoCA, the Center for New Music in San Francisco, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight Festival. Indeed, HOCKET has premiered over 100 chamber and solo works, as well as having collaborated with prestigious new music ensembles, among them Eighth Blackbird.
And while the COVID crisis has basically sidelined live performances, HOCKET has been fiendishly busy, notably with its commissioning project, #What2020SoundsLike. Making video recordings of 50 new works — miniatures ranging from 15 to 45 seconds in length from 50 commissioned composers — Gibson and Kotcheff recently snagged a fistful of awards from readers of this publication. Included were: “Best Streamed Performance Created During the Pandemic,” “Best Discovery,” and “Best New-Music Ensemble,” with Kotcheff racking up a solo win for “Best Instrumental Recital Performance” for his 60-minute interpretation of Frederic Rzewski’s Songs of Insurrection.
July 14, 2020
by Peter Feher
Some of the new music that’s being released right now — on CDs, archived and streamed online — isn’t, well, new. In a way, this is good: the lag between when something’s recorded and when it’s released means that there’s plenty of new music yet to come, this year at least. But the delay also robs music of its power to react to the moment. And there’s a lot going on right now!
With an ongoing commissioning project, Los Angeles-based piano duo HOCKET is making a musical document of the times. Launched last month, #What2020SoundsLike has the duo, Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff, recording 50 new works from 50 commissioned composers. The works are miniatures, between 15 and 45 seconds, so that they can be rehearsed and recorded quickly. The result, Gibson explains: “a sense of ‘real-time’ musical reaction to the moment.”
November 21, 2017
by Jim Farber
As War of the Worlds raged on the main stage, two fine young pianists (and toy pianists), Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff, who perform as HOCKET, performed a skillfully crafted recital of Andy Akiho’s Karakurenai for prepared piano; qsqsqsqsqqqqqqqq by Tristan Perich (the piece I mentioned for three toy pianos with Vicki Ray joining in); the world premiere of Nina C. Young’s Tête-à-Tête, and Kotcheff’s percussive composition, wgah ‘nahl fhtagn.
May 23, 2017
by Rebecca Lentjes
Similarly virtuosic, but about 10,000 times as loud, were the two performances of the piano duo HOCKET. Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff brought an unparalleled exuberance to their rendition of Joseph Michaels‘ Together in Perfect Harmony (2014), which mostly consisted of tone clusters bouncing up and down the keyboard. At one point both pianists, practically laughing out loud, laid their full forearms across the keyboard (shouldn’t this piece be called Fourarms?), generating such extreme hops and leaps of dissonance that it went all the way around the bend into consonance. They also performed Michael Laurello‘s Touch (2016), in which an opening section of chaotic staccato notes morphed into smoother phrases and then staggered dissonant chords built out of the opening material.
April 29, 2017
by Steven Pisano
The highlight of the night, and indeed of the festival (so far!) was Michaels’ “Together in Perfect Harmony” played by the splendid and resourceful L.A. piano duo HOCKET (Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff). Long after leaving the black cavern of The Kitchen, this piece still warms me with joy. Playing together furiously side-by-side at the keyboard, sometimes plinking keys, and most excitingly banging on the keyboard with both elbows like a pair of crazy monkeys, the piece was a rapturous expression of the pure joy that music can bring inside a person. In a word, it was FUN (and I mean those caps deliberately).
Aug 29, 2016
by Christian Hertzog
Four-hand piano music and toy piano duets require telepathic coordination; HOCKET proved masters of such performance. Highlights included member Thomas Kotcheff’s “death, hocket, and roll,” where the keyboardists tossed brutal chords back and forth between two toy pianos and locked together on giddy whirlwind runs up their instruments. Mayke Nas’ “DiGiT #2” playfully explored a careful choreography of forearm tone clusters on the piano, which gradually abandoned the keyboard entirely for a new music version of “Pat-A-Cake.”
Talent takes root at USC Thornton
April 7, 2016
by Julie Riggott
In a Koreatown gallery last fall, two USC-born ensembles alternated performances of new music, flaunting technical mastery and free-flowing artistry.
After piano duo HOCKET banged out a percussive piece on toy pianos, the cellists of Sakura took the stage to show off the range of their instrument.
The concert, part of the Tuesdays@MonkSpace series curated by pianist Aron Kallay DMA ’09 garnered rave reviews from Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed, who called the ensembles “brilliant” and “superb.”
HOCKET and Sakura are two of what Swed called the “hip, imaginative and technically dazzling local ensembles” that have sprung up “as wonderfully as wild flowers” in Los Angeles — and they sprouted at the USC Thornton School of Music
Music ensembles HOCKET and Sakura bathe Monk Space in an acoustical glow
October 15, 2015
by Mark Swed
HOCKET is a piano duo; Sakura is an ensemble of five cellos. Both groups, which alternated throughout the program, are products of USC and are brilliant. Hocket's Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotcheff confined themselves to high-gloss white toy pianos. Their program was mainly Angeleno.
The members of Sakura were students of the cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, whose name translates from the German as cherry tree, which is "sakura" in Japanese.
Pieces by Andy Akiho ("Karakurenai"), Aaron Holloway-Nahum (the fourth part of his 40-minute "Remember Me?"), Ryan Harper ("A 19") and HOCKET's Kotcheff ("death, hocket, and roll") did everything you possibly could do to every inch of the toy pianos. These are not exactly tonally nuanced instruments, so the emphasis was on percussion. Minimalist beats predominated, as did arresting sound effects achieved by violently hitting the keys or racing hands across the keys in massive glissandi.
Most surprising was just how much sound and variety can be produced by a couple of toys. When John Cage wrote his Suite for Toy Piano in 1948, he was the first to show that the instrument needn't be a joke, but even he couldn't have foreseen what he would unleash more than half a century later. He did, though, use toy pianos for provocation in his 1960 "Music for Amplified Toy Pianos," which HOCKET played Tuesday. The players create their own activities by manipulating a non-specific graphic score. HOCKET, playing from iPads, employed toys and objects galore as noisemakers to create a crazy, ever-changing soundscape.
HOCKET new music ensemble makes waves at Carlsbad Music Festival
August 31, 2015
The new music duo, HOCKET, which includes current USC Thornton D.M.A. Composition student, Thomas Kotcheff (M.M. ’12, composition) and Composition faculty member Sarah Gibson (M.M. ’10, composition; D.M.A. ’15, composition), recently performed in a series of concerts at the Carlsbad Music Festival.
The duo performed compositions by David Lang, Alex Weiser, Aaron Holloway-Nahum, and Tristan Perich – and premiered new works by Thornton alumni Emily Cooley (M.M. ’14, composition) and Ryan Harper (M.M. ’12, composition). The Carlsbad Music Festival was founded by alumnus Matt McBane (BM ’12, film scoring).
In a review for the San Diego Union Tribune, James Chute noted that “In the west coast premiere of Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s ‘Remember Me? (Part IV)’ for two toy pianos, [Sarah Gibson and Thomas Kotchef’s] teamwork was exemplary, their playing was a delight.”
Carlsbad Music Festival offers speed listening
August 29, 2015
by James Chute
The piano duo HOCKET: Just their 20 minutes was worth the trip to Carlsbad. In the west coast premiere of Aaron Holloway-Nahum’s “Remember Me? (Part IV)” for two toy pianos, their teamwork was exemplary, their playing was a delight. Their reading of Tristan Perich’s “Duet” on the church’s well-worn Mason & Hamlin grand that followed was also convincing. They not only showed a commitment to the music, but to communicating with each other.