Peaceful Percussion

“There is a percussion at the heart of everything. The rain on leaves. The tide against stone. The footfall in an empty hallway. Vinsent Planjer has spent a lifetime listening for it.”
Such is the introduction to this album in the enclosed booklet, and it is an apt description of its intent: a meditative journey through sound led by one of the most sensitive percussionists performing today. Planjer has performed with Rembrandt Trio for over two decades, and is a master of sound, rhythm, and texture. His work is consistently quite remarkable—intimate, expressive, and deeply communicative.
The sounds on this album are created with instruments Planjer has adopted and adapted for his own purposes. While some of the passages may suggest recordings of natural phenomena, they are not (except, perhaps, for “birds” on the first track). Instead, Planjer produces these sounds through his craft with instruments such as the ocean drum, bells, log drum, gong, bass drum, frame drum, tombak, marimba, temple blocks, cymbals, and shruti box. The instruments used on each track are listed in the booklet.
The entire effect is magical—not in any mystical sense, but in its capacity to evoke an immersive sound world in which the listener willingly surrenders.
Planjer’s work as a musician spans jazz, contemporary classical, world music, and theatre, but at its core lies a simple conviction: percussion, even without a single melody line, can carry the full weight of human feeling. Peaceful Percussion is a distillation of a lifetime of listening—five meditations, each an invitation to pause, breathe, and hear the world anew.
Recorded by Jared Sacks in his new recording studio, Banana Bread Studios, Herwijnen, Netherlands.