Pigeons

Clay shooting—with percussionists in the firing lines.

And… pull!

Pigeons is a clay shooting event, but the birds are the musicians and pigeons are the ammo. Three robotic trap machines take centre stage. In unrelenting, symphonic, patterns, they hurl hundreds of fluorescent clay targets at a wall of suspended, resonant percussive objects. The musicians duck, flap, glide and slide among the projectiles, in a frantic search for safety. Glorious music rings out—fragile, violent, poetic and heroic. It’s percussionist vs pigeon. Human vs machine.

The idea was hatched by Speak Percussion’s Co-Artistic Director Eugene Ughetti with a bunch of risk-taking collaborators who’ve been working to redefine the potential of percussion since the turn of the millennium. Will their plan present a logical endpoint to our algorithmically massaged future? Or lead us on a path to broken bones? Either way, it’ll be epic.