Colin Currie Group returns to Bold Tendencies

Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park © Bold Tendencies

On Saturday 4 July, Colin and the Colin Currie Group return to Peckham's iconic rooftop car park for another appearance at Bold Tendencies, following the success of their Reich Repetitions programme last year.

This time, they perform Steve Reich's seminal Drumming—the work that launched the group 20 years ago in a BBC Proms performance celebrating Reich's 70th birthday. The concert also marks the 20th anniversary of Bold Tendencies and forms part of Colin's celebrations of Steve Reich's 90th birthday year.

Dating from 1971, Drumming is an epic work for nine percussionists, two vocalists and a piccolo player, and employs Reich’s trademark phasing technique. Over four connected parts, the composer explores different instrument groups, first focusing on bongo drums, then marimbas and glockenspiels before the complete ensemble come together for the piece’s climax. 

In 2018, the Colin Currie Group released Drumming on Colin Currie Records. Stream & purchase here.

Watch Colin and the Colin Currie Quartet perform Drumming Part 1 live from ConcertLab Utrecht:

Colin Currie performs world premiere of Tansy Davies' 'Earthworks' at Aldeburgh Festival

© Frances Marshall

On 19 June, Colin will return to the Aldeburgh Festival alongside the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Kevin John Edusei to perform the World Premiere of Tansy Davies’ Earthworks for percussion and orchestra. The performance will also mark Colin’s 40th Concerto Premiere of his career.

The concert will be broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 from 7.30pm BST, and will be available afterwards on BBC Sounds.

Commissioned by Britten Pears Arts, Residentie Orkest The Hague, and with the support of an anonymous donor, Earthworks is a geologically-inspired percussion concerto composed for Colin. It takes inspiration from vast geoglyphs like the Uffington White Horse and the Acre structures of the Amazon rainforest, revealed by deforestation.

It recalls an earlier work – the ritualistic, rhythmic Dark Ground for solo percussion, which Colin recorded on Colin Currie Records in February 2025. Currie calls Dark Ground  “stridently disquieting …it seems it could be a pop-style drum-kit that is to hand for the music, but conflicting sounds from another kind of place are never far away”.  

Read more about the world premiere here.

In 2023, Colin presented the 2023 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection to Davies, remarking on her “uncanny ability to reconcile the edgier elements of pop and funk into vastly ambitious and immensely satisfying structures of truly classical sensibilities.”

Colin Currie Group celebrates The Martland Band

© Frances Marshall

This Friday 17 April, Colin and the Colin Currie Group return to London’s Kings Place to perform an all-Steve Martland programme as part of the venue’s wider tribute to the composer across their season.

The Group will, as usual, be led by Colin, who will perform on marimba in Horses of Instruction and Starry Night, and will also conduct the larger band in the second half of the concert. For Colin, Steve Martland was both a mentor and friend, and performed in the Steve Martland Band in some of his earliest professional engagements as a percussionist.

Colin second from left in the original Steve Martland band.

The band will be hand-picked by Currie for this special performance, and will feature musicians who played in the original Martland Band, or have other connections to the composer and his music. The programme will revive some of his best known band works: Kick, Beat the Retreat and Eternal Delight.

Watch a special feature video with Colin and Kings Place ahead of the concert below:

Colin Currie Group releases landmark new album Steve Reich: The Sextets on Colin Currie Records

Today, Colin and the Colin Currie Group have released their new album: Steve Reich The Sextets, marking the composer’s 90th birthday year and the 20th anniversary of the Colin Currie Group. The album is the first time all of Reich’s works for sextet forces – Sextet, Double Sextet, Dance Patterns and Six Marimbas – have ever been compiled on a single album.

This release is the sixth album on Colin Currie Records, which was launched in 2017 with the release of the Colin Currie Group’s landmark first recording of Steve Reich’s Drumming.

Stream/purchase Steve Reich The Sextets.

This new album was made possible by a successful Kickstarter campaign, enthusiastically and kindly backed by supporters of the group and Steve Reich. It was then recorded at London’s Kings Place in August 2025.

Colin Currie Quartet perform in Birmingham and Cambridge

© Frances Marshall

This week, the Colin Currie Quartet give performances at Birmingham’s Barber Institute and West Road Concert Hall Cambridge.

On 24 March at the Barber Institute, Colin will lead a public workshop on Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, leading to a mass performance of the work at Elgar Concert Hall. The following evening, The Colin Currie Quartet will present works by upcoming young composers such as Andy Akiho and Aileen Sweeney, alongside Julia Wolfe’s compelling work for 4 drum-kits, Dark Full Ride, and music by Steve Reich: Nagoya Marimbas, Mallet Quartet and Drumming Part 1. The Quartet will then repeat the programme on 27 March as part of the Cambridge Music Festival.

In January, the Colin Currie Quartet gave the world premiere of a new work by Joe Duddell at King’s Place, This Place, These People, a set of musical portraits of people from the King’s Cross migrant community. Earlier in the season the Quartet appeared at Two Moors Festival and ConcertLAB in Utrecht, and in June they perform in Czechia at the Concentus Moraviae festival.

Watch the Colin Currie Quartet perform Steve Reich’s Drumming Part 1 in Utrecht:

Colin Currie makes his debut with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra

Colin performing the world premiere of Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes in 2022 © Curtis Perry

On Friday 27 February, Colin returns to Canada to make his debut with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in a concert at the Orpheum Theatre. Conducted by Naomi Woo, he will perform the West Coast premiere of Nicole Lizée’s percussion concerto Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes.

No stranger to the work, Colin performed the world premiere with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa in 2022, as well as the European premiere later that year at the BBC Proms with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

““An intriguing piece, it certainly maintains interest, and the sight of
Colin Currie hastily moving between his numerous stations ranged across
the front of the stage added visual drama to the performance.
We were treated to a kaleidoscope of slick effects and novel textures…
Currie’s infectious dynamism made for an exciting performance.””

— Bachtrack

The work features many extended techniques for the soloist, and as well as playing on regular percussion instruments, Colin will also play on an analog synthesiser, two electro-acoustic guitars, a cello, and a roll of gaffer tape. An additional performance will take place at the Bell Performing Arts Centre on 1 March.

Looking ahead, Colin travels to the East Coast of the US to return to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in two concerts at Kleinhans Music Hall on 7 & 8 March.

Colin will perform another work composed for him, this time Danny Elfman’s Percussion Concerto, which Colin performed the world premiere of in 2022 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and later released a recording of on Sony Classical with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

““Inspired and initiated by the Scottish virtuoso Colin Currie...
an infectious confection which keeps Currie on the move.
The slow movement ‘Down’ seeks out repose as strings take the lead
and tuned percussion – like the seductive marimba –
lend embellishment and shimmer.
I love the spooky John Carpenter-like ending of this movement.
Pure Elfman.””

— Gramophone

Colin Currie performs at Sheffield's Music In the Round

© Frances Marshall

This weekend, Colin performs at Upper Chapel Sheffield, as part of the Percussion, Pattern & Primes weekend by Music In The Round.

Colin will open the concert with five solo works consisting of Kevin Volans’s Asanga, David Horne’s Pulse, Andy Akiho’s Spiel, Bryce Dessner’s Tromp Miniature, and Rolf Wallin’s Realismos Mágicos. He will then be joined by string quartet Ensemble 360 for Andy Akiho’s ‎Aluminous, Robert Honstein’s Continuous interior for vibraphone & strings, and the UK premiere of Sam Adams’s Sundial.

Sam Adams - son of American composer John Adams - shares that Sundial “explores ideas of resonance and brightness.” and that “In many passages, the strings elongate the percussion sounds and vice versa, so much so that the instruments on stage might sound like one polyphonic organism arranged not in a hierarchy but in a symbiotic web in which the roles of the instruments are balanced and consistently in flux.”

Read more about the work here.

Colin Currie Group announce Steve Reich: The Sextets - pre-order and single release

Today, Colin and the Colin Currie Group announce their upcoming album Steve Reich: The Sextets, now available for pre-order, alongside the release of the first single, Double Sextet III. Fast.

Stream the first single, and pre-order the album here.

Full album release 10 April 2026.

The recording marks the first time Reich’s sextet works have been brought together on a single album, released to celebrate the composer’s 90th birthday in 2026, and coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Colin Currie Group.

 "No words can truly and fully encapsulate the uplifting emotional magic of these great works. Let us cherish and celebrate them as the great man reaches another milestone in his unparalleled lifespan of influence and inspiration."
- Colin Currie

Planned in tandem with the album release, Colin Currie has a string of performances across 2026 to celebrate Steve Reich’s 90th birthday, including appearances as conductor, with the Colin Currie Group and the Colin Currie Quartet. These include a major weekend celebration of Steve Reich at The Glasshouse in October 2026, curated and led by Colin. The Colin Currie Group will also be touring a new programme in Autumn 2026 to include Double Sextet from the album – dates to be announced. 

Tomorrow, 31 January, the Colin Currie Quartet return to Kings Place, London, to perform Steve Reich Drumming [Part 1], in a programme also featuring works by Kevin Volans, Andy Akiho and the world premiere of Joe Duddell’s This Place, These People.