from Shuffle Magazine:
by Eric Shepherd Martin
As a band name, the Enrichment Center Percussion Ensemble is the most accurate- and potentially distracting- for its members. With the exception of director/composer/guitarist Aaron Bachelder and some helping hands (Triangle-based artists Jeffrey Dean Foster, Vickie Burick and Morgan Kraft, to name a few), the group is composed of seven members of the Winston-Salem based Enrichment Center, an organization dedicated to the artistic development of adults with disabilities. But to focus only on its artists' personal obstacles is to downplay the vitality of the music they make. "The center serves people with cognitive disabilities, and they run the gamut," says Bachelder, speaking from his Winston-Salem office. "It includes some people with autism and some people with physical challenges as well. But, honestly, I try to avoid talking about any specific challenges the folks in the group have." Listeners to their upcoming second LP, Ten Songs, will likely share the same sentiment.
As a touring musician in several projects around the area (notably the free improvisational group Spool Ensemble), Bachelder says he originally founded the Percussion Ensemble in 1997 with aspirations of making the tribe into a classical music outfit. After their first recording- the song "Nomos" for violinist Sarah Johnson's Fiddler's Galaxy- he had an epiphany and swayed the group in a drastically different direction. "(Spool Ensemble) had a gig opening for Godspeed You! Black Emperor," Bachelder says, "and I dug it, but I thought this sort of modern merging... could actually be better done, and more interesting." The ensemble members were not only willing to work with Bachelder's change of sonic persona, but proactively contributed to it, as member Marcie Haley began to take a keen interest in the drum kit which especially suited an instrumental rock soundscape. Since the release of 2002's Three Songs [sic], the ensemble has performed for thousands of people, often in collaborations with the Chimaera Physical Theater, the African-American Dance Ensemble, and the Open Dream Ensemble of the North Carolina School of the Arts. The band also continues to make music completely on its own terms.